tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725Wed, 30 Nov 2016 12:29:08 +0000History of photographyreal photo postcardsUSATurkeyBritainsnaphotsSnapshotslandscapesCanadapostcardsstudio portraitscinemafashionFranceGermanycartes de visitearchitectureportraitsphoto albumswomenCitiesConstantinopleAustraliaactressesBulgariaRoss Verlagcabinet cardshand-colouringAmerican Westactorscostumeeroticaphotomontagerural lifetheatreMoviesOrientalismminiature viewsAlex BinderEgyptHeritageReutlingerWorld War 1World War 2carshighwaysEnvironmentFolkloreFred Judgecigarette cardsephemerapropagandastereographsthe seaBerlinInteriorsNevada Photo ServiceParisanimalschildhoodengineeringnightseasidestudio boatsstudio propsBurton FrasherRenoRussiadisasteritinerant photographersmarriageBamforth and Co.BoxingCabinet Cards. Carte de VistesCowboysExpositionsHollywoodIndiaInstamaticItalyLehnert and Landrockadvertisingbridgesdancedeathhumouridentity portraitsthe beachtrainszoosAfricaAsylumsCecil BeatonConstructionEastman StudioGeorge ValentineHarold SanbornHungaryIndustryLallie CharlesMelbourneNapoleonP M BatchelderRita MartinScotlandSurvey MovementsTintypesWaleryWalkingWilliam MartinYosemite National ParkYvonaircraftbathroomsclothinggroupslobby cardsmaterial culturemistakesnegative paper printspanoramaspictorialismpoliticsswimsuitworkAbdullah FreresAghanistanAlexader KahleAlexander 'Zan' StarkAndrew Alexander ForbesArchaeologyBelgian CongoBlackpoolBotterill StudioC L HuntCameroonCatsCharles NettletonChicagoChinaCosta RicaCross and DimmittDiane ArbusEugene RicheeFinlandFotocelereFrancis FrithFreudFrith and CoGeorge Edward AustinGeorge Washington WilsonGreeceH P RobinsonH. P PoissonHapsburgsIranJ Boyd EllisJames BamforthJapanJohn Joseph DwyerKenyaKeystone View Co.Khyber PassLatviaLee FriedlanderLondonLondon Stereographic and Phototography CoMbutiMelanesiaMiamiNadarNative AmericansNevadaNew ZealandNorwayPalestinePanamaPanama CanalPascal SebahPolandPsychiatryRomaniaRotary Photographic CoScandinaviaSherlock HolmesTASS photo agencyUgandaUnderwood & UnderwoodValentine & CoWilliam Friese-GreeneWinterWire photosbeauty contestsboxerscalendarscasinoscircuscruisesde MaupassantdogsgunsliteraturemoustachesoperaphotonramblingreadingsportsweatherOne Man's TreasureExplorations in photographyhttp://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)Blogger241125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-935478526457512013Sun, 16 Oct 2016 00:17:00 +00002016-10-15T17:17:00.458-07:00BritainchildhoodHistory of photographyportraitsreal photo postcardsSnapshotsCHILD'S PLAY<div class="MsoNormal"> <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -</style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Nine photos of Edwardian children</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.</span><span lang="EN-GB">”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Graham Greene</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nHljlLA_4PA/WALEes2M7lI/AAAAAAACCB8/OTAbdN8W2uItZATlG3XkwQrwjzdIS2MIgCPcB/s1600/childhood3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="390" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nHljlLA_4PA/WALEes2M7lI/AAAAAAACCB8/OTAbdN8W2uItZATlG3XkwQrwjzdIS2MIgCPcB/s640/childhood3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The children in these British photographs, especially those taken in the north of England between 1905 and 1914, belonged to the first generation in over two hundred years who were given a good chance of surviving until adulthood. The mother of this baby, taken by John Brown Smithson of Leyburn in Yorkshire, had grown up in a world where, statistically, one in four children would die at birth and only half live past the age of five. Disease took most of them but the real culprit was industrialization. In factory towns the smog carried cadmium and lead and other dangerous metals that poisoned infants. Studio scenes of adoring Mum with her newborn in this pose are not that common. Generally photographers preferred the mother to be seated although in this case Smithson got to show off his five headed badger rug.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UebIfnepJ04/WALEeyhoosI/AAAAAAACCB8/GTAnIhMQVW4TUlYP2dtkV2cQzzqB-QDAQCPcB/s1600/childhood2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UebIfnepJ04/WALEeyhoosI/AAAAAAACCB8/GTAnIhMQVW4TUlYP2dtkV2cQzzqB-QDAQCPcB/s640/childhood2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen Kane </i>reporter Jerry Thompson sets out to discover the meaning behind Kane’s dying word, ‘Rosebud’ and fails to discover it was the brand name of his sled when he was a little boy. For Kane the sled is not only one of his earliest memories, it takes him back to that age of innocence before everything he won and lost destroyed him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>You get the feeling the rabbit in this image has been invested with similar power. In years to come, most of her early childhood will be consigned to fog but she will remember the rabbit. For a while it was her best friend.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ko-22mjBERc/WALEfDyOQHI/AAAAAAACCB8/SG2_hDRrohkMY8hvcWrJPLwgz_BL5gg_QCPcB/s1600/childhood9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ko-22mjBERc/WALEfDyOQHI/AAAAAAACCB8/SG2_hDRrohkMY8hvcWrJPLwgz_BL5gg_QCPcB/s640/childhood9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Unknown child, unknown photographer, unknown date but certainly taken at one of England’s seaside resorts about 1905. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the major resorts at Brighton, Blackpool, Southport and Scarborough were for the gentry, who could afford the hotels and who followed fads such as water cures and sulphur baths. By the 1850s and the expansion of railways some progressive factory owners were sending workers off to the seaside for long weekends and in 1871 the Bank Holidays Act granted a generous four days to workers. Even then, resorts were for adults not children. That began to change towards the late nineteenth century and by the time this lad stood at the water’s edge it was not just common, it was expected that parents would bring their children and spend most of the holiday with them. Before long the motor car gave families the freedom to spread out from the resorts and find their own spaces. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P3IkeaC2f3c/WALEfPjMdjI/AAAAAAACCB8/8p5dDl6_cqsrPDM2nLcdXdpmoQHZv1GEwCPcB/s1600/childhood8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P3IkeaC2f3c/WALEfPjMdjI/AAAAAAACCB8/8p5dDl6_cqsrPDM2nLcdXdpmoQHZv1GEwCPcB/s640/childhood8.jpg" width="406" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Our subjects are getting older. During the late nineteenth century both girls and boys wore dresses up to the age of five (and up to the 1920s pink signified boys, blue for girls). Both genders also wore sailor suits, in fashion for boys since the 1840s when the future Edward VII put one on but by the 1910s every five year old girl had to have one too. Taxidermist and photographer Theo Upton Barber, AKA “Tubs”, was born in Wisconsin but moved to England around the turn of the century and opened his studio at 84 Preston Road in Faversham, Kent in 1911.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pv7YVU6GIpM/WALEfVy4jRI/AAAAAAACCB8/xfqMGFp_Mp820mGZfH81YRK2ywMA-ZkBQCPcB/s1600/childhood7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pv7YVU6GIpM/WALEfVy4jRI/AAAAAAACCB8/xfqMGFp_Mp820mGZfH81YRK2ywMA-ZkBQCPcB/s640/childhood7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In an era when it’s not unusual for men to extend their childhoods into their thirties, photos like this are a sharp reminder that a century ago children began their move into adulthood as soon as they handed down their child uniforms to their younger brothers and sisters, around five years old. This boy isn’t even ten yet already he dresses like a pocket version of his father, right down to the watch chain. Even his pose is adult-like. The photographer was Frederick Southwell, who operated studios in Battersea, Hammersmith and Wandsworth and apparently was no relation to his namesake of the better known Southwell Brothers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QinO_1r_-14/WALEfco55_I/AAAAAAACCB8/BMH1h_KimzwACXJX6BqbgJOJEkgcM1ZMQCPcB/s1600/childhood6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QinO_1r_-14/WALEfco55_I/AAAAAAACCB8/BMH1h_KimzwACXJX6BqbgJOJEkgcM1ZMQCPcB/s640/childhood6.jpg" width="388" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Do you know who is sitting on the other side of Lucy Henson?”</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> Written in a child’s uncertain handwriting, posted from Batley, near Leeds and addressed to a Mrs Rolandson of Grewelthorpse, near Ripon in Yorkshire, we can assume that’s Lucy on the stile and by ‘the other side’ the writer means of the camera. Again we get that notion that will increasingly cease to have relevance as the twentieth century progresses, that the child is just a pocket version of the adult.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DS8a9wm9T-A/WALEfmtDmQI/AAAAAAACCBo/Tn0PhcxRiZQ4wTQ_lAGiJ-Aa9dD3So-owCPcB/s1600/childhood5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DS8a9wm9T-A/WALEfmtDmQI/AAAAAAACCBo/Tn0PhcxRiZQ4wTQ_lAGiJ-Aa9dD3So-owCPcB/s640/childhood5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The photographer is not identified but from the quality of the print and the evidence of studio lighting we can say he or she was a professional. The performers are strictly amateur, which is not to say they are bad (‘ham’ seems a useful word here). There are hundreds of thousands of photographs of children in fancy dress from the Edwardian period; not so many of them performing for the camera as here. The wall at the back and the parquetrie on the floor are sufficiently indeterminate to make it understand whether this was taken in a private home or a school. I suspect the latter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ftPSTMTD5GM/WALEfkGnjXI/AAAAAAACCBs/t-iEdwBFDnkgAjANlipSeXx39lhW7rj4gCPcB/s1600/childhood4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ftPSTMTD5GM/WALEfkGnjXI/AAAAAAACCBs/t-iEdwBFDnkgAjANlipSeXx39lhW7rj4gCPcB/s640/childhood4.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">More role playing, There was a moment, roughly between 1895 and 1910, when people could believe that the upcoming century would put technology to good and with our extended life spans, better education and concordant freedoms most problems would disappear. By the time this photo was taken that dream was in ruins. These lads are too young to have flown in a proper warplane but just the right age to catch the experience the next time it came around just over twenty years later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EWRjm5kCKQI/WALEf1NK6DI/AAAAAAACCBw/iNUhAI6u3iILoDz-nownvDNoh-u3pipngCPcB/s1600/rosebstorr1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EWRjm5kCKQI/WALEf1NK6DI/AAAAAAACCBw/iNUhAI6u3iILoDz-nownvDNoh-u3pipngCPcB/s640/rosebstorr1.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">This photo was likely taken in 1907, the year twelve year old Frances Bradley Storr baptised babies but also adults into her Primitive Methodist sect before congregations of several thousand. Primitive Methodism sounds much what it was: passionate revival meetings, and hellfire and damnation sermons by the likes of Miss Storr, who had feeling to compensate for her lack of education or straitened background. Like the Peculiar People of Plumstead and the New Forest Shakers from a few years earlier, she espoused a religious empowerment of the working class that was socialistic in everything but its politics. She was hardly the only child preacher working in England at the time: Lonnie Dennis, Florrie Elkins , Gertie Brackenbury and Jack Cooke being others, but stateside there were reputedly dozens, working a kind of sideshow circuit. In the 1920s Frances and her mother moved to Canada where she continued to preach. The photographer is unidentified but Doncaster photographer Luke Bagshaw took a lot of her promotional shots. </span> </div>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/10/childs-play.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-2702748872688585011Sat, 17 Sep 2016 23:05:00 +00002016-09-17T16:05:47.236-07:00bridgesBritainHistory of photographylandscapesrural lifeseasidethe seaWalkingLAND<div class="MsoNormal"> <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}</style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Fourteen photographs of the English Landscape</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“The ordinary can be absolutely miraculous.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Simon Armitage</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ccVS6nm0ync/V93GWXN86LI/AAAAAAACB58/GOgsycUBeschhgM9e7CVfAzK5Gcquo4ZACPcB/s1600/britland13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ccVS6nm0ync/V93GWXN86LI/AAAAAAACB58/GOgsycUBeschhgM9e7CVfAzK5Gcquo4ZACPcB/s640/britland13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The fourteen photos here, each measuring twelve by eight centimetres, were found at Spitalfields Market. Some of them look like they are of the moorlands in Derbyshire at the edge of the Pennines. Others look like they come from the east coast of Yorkshire, near Scarborough or Whitby.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UoD86UEjVQE/V93GXB1WhzI/AAAAAAACB58/Vn9Qqq6EJF05JkhYPfbesXaIS4CLhQd2ACPcB/s1600/britland11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UoD86UEjVQE/V93GXB1WhzI/AAAAAAACB58/Vn9Qqq6EJF05JkhYPfbesXaIS4CLhQd2ACPcB/s640/britland11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">They lay among small stacks of old hardbacks and ephemera spread across the table. The dealer couldn’t say much about them except he had had them for some time, they’d be cheaper the more I bought and they had come with ‘a lot of stuff to do with the Festival of Britain’.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-adt__MtwXFc/V93GaEXAKBI/AAAAAAACB58/wqqLAOXrB_I5s6ixJMz-i7LiXG3SRGsnwCPcB/s1600/britland12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-adt__MtwXFc/V93GaEXAKBI/AAAAAAACB58/wqqLAOXrB_I5s6ixJMz-i7LiXG3SRGsnwCPcB/s640/britland12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That made sense. The photos looked to be from around that time – 1951 – and they look to be the work of a professional; someone sent out to take a set of photos for a magazine article on the splendours of the north. Certainly we can see why someone thought there was a landscape worth promoting.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f2B0aFkXhec/V93GXXZ436I/AAAAAAACB58/W1jIaabU8vssINSyblJecQ8ThRIe2WbXgCPcB/s1600/britland6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f2B0aFkXhec/V93GXXZ436I/AAAAAAACB58/W1jIaabU8vssINSyblJecQ8ThRIe2WbXgCPcB/s640/britland6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Pennines and the Derbyshire moors, which is where we are now decided we are, can invoke many associations, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pride and Prejudice</i> to Myra Hindley and everything in between, but these days Simon Armitage, in particular his translation or interpretation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gawain and the Green Knight </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pearl. </i>Although the identity original author is unknown, scholars agree that he wrote both poems in the late 14<sup>th</sup>century and linguistic clues indicate he came from this area.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qzwl0d4DvhI/V93GX_qJ-lI/AAAAAAACB58/XB-1nsM4vkwO936FwNAp2DHiJs-gPehygCPcB/s1600/britland2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qzwl0d4DvhI/V93GX_qJ-lI/AAAAAAACB58/XB-1nsM4vkwO936FwNAp2DHiJs-gPehygCPcB/s640/britland2.jpg" width="434" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A brief synopsis of the first: One New Year’s Day the Green Knight turns up at King Arthur’s court and asks to have his head cut off. Sir Gawain obliges but must fulfil a promise to meet the beheaded one at the Green Chapel in a year’s time. Gawain sets out and somewhere in the damp landscape he finds a castle. The master welcomes him then heads off the next morning on a hunt while Gawain keeps his beautiful wife company, and you just have to read it yourself. The landscape, as Armitage describes it anyway, is more rugged than these images of moorland suggest, more like parts of Staffordshire to the west.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QrFprEmgKEw/V93GakxzGAI/AAAAAAACB58/4WpUO1HjPp091TvGUToryoWOTkccfvkJACPcB/s1600/britland15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QrFprEmgKEw/V93GakxzGAI/AAAAAAACB58/4WpUO1HjPp091TvGUToryoWOTkccfvkJACPcB/s640/britland15.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Pearl</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> however takes place on open land, where a man grieving for his young daughter Pearl, follows a river and meets a woman walking on the other side. They talk across the water and she reveals she is his daughter, now grown up and a Queen of Christ. They debate various issues this raises until, desperate to reach out to her, the man jumps into the river and tries to cross it.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_8_z-hzhlRk/V93GYfhFX7I/AAAAAAACB58/ZWvUMiyTATcbyEkqCDbmWGi_04sUK2s-wCPcB/s1600/britland3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="442" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_8_z-hzhlRk/V93GYfhFX7I/AAAAAAACB58/ZWvUMiyTATcbyEkqCDbmWGi_04sUK2s-wCPcB/s640/britland3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Not that either <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gawain</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pearl</i> are dependent upon the landscape to tell their story although in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gawain</i> there is the sense that up here it is wild and rugged, especially compared to the more gentle lands in the south where Arthur has his court. Also, in both there is an idea that the landscape is mutable, which is important in moorland where the weather can shift by the hour.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wv8NqjcqOWs/V93GYkxNcxI/AAAAAAACB58/UXSXcYEbX_giACvBDLAG0GCqdW0SiQMtQCPcB/s1600/britland8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wv8NqjcqOWs/V93GYkxNcxI/AAAAAAACB58/UXSXcYEbX_giACvBDLAG0GCqdW0SiQMtQCPcB/s640/britland8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Even though they are found across Britain, the dry stone wall is something of an icon on the Yorkshire dales, the way black windmills belong to Norfolk. What gives walls like this one their timelessness isn’t the stonework so much as the feeling this was built with some purpose in mind but that has been forgotten for centuries. It meanders across the land.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe0gGKo5OCI/V93GZE7Px7I/AAAAAAACB58/20l3ul7-S6QxKjTs6ZQHzNMrkMo6sRKkwCPcB/s1600/britland14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe0gGKo5OCI/V93GZE7Px7I/AAAAAAACB58/20l3ul7-S6QxKjTs6ZQHzNMrkMo6sRKkwCPcB/s640/britland14.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Speaking of Norfolk, this looks so much like the coast around Cromer and Happisburgh that we could put all doubt aside. That exposed reef can be thought of as the edge of Doggerland, the now submerged plain that once linked Britain to Europe and was home to mammoths, lions, rhinos and Neanderthals. Our photographer wouldn’t have known that, or that the oldest relic of any human in Europe would be found near here. But then, in 1951 a lot of people thought anything from the time before the war was old.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Iph8Uq0WNT8/V93GTFtUSJI/AAAAAAACB58/IfKzYh0c09whM-2UFDsMtDjWNW4w0iPeQCPcB/s1600/britland7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Iph8Uq0WNT8/V93GTFtUSJI/AAAAAAACB58/IfKzYh0c09whM-2UFDsMtDjWNW4w0iPeQCPcB/s640/britland7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Even if I had bought these in another country, we’d still know it was England. The patchwork fields and hedgerows tell us it can’t be anywhere else. This was no doubt our photographer’s intention: to get an impression of the land that wasn’t just idealized but emblematic and one that visitors as well as citizens would recognize.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Klt8W4o6ILs/V93GTmqw7cI/AAAAAAACB58/Y6pFbEFvDHwNA_7qCKeMAkMdJIi8zXhWwCPcB/s1600/britland1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Klt8W4o6ILs/V93GTmqw7cI/AAAAAAACB58/Y6pFbEFvDHwNA_7qCKeMAkMdJIi8zXhWwCPcB/s640/britland1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EQ854-3RdVw/V93GXob2r8I/AAAAAAACB58/b8R7B6pFPcU1bX7v31zEVdYUiAK2uddGQCPcB/s1600/britland4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EQ854-3RdVw/V93GXob2r8I/AAAAAAACB58/b8R7B6pFPcU1bX7v31zEVdYUiAK2uddGQCPcB/s640/britland4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g82Yu3n38o0/V93GZTN85JI/AAAAAAACB58/oTKnYWFKazoSrxVmrrS-wmgmPi4CInFmwCPcB/s1600/britland9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g82Yu3n38o0/V93GZTN85JI/AAAAAAACB58/oTKnYWFKazoSrxVmrrS-wmgmPi4CInFmwCPcB/s640/britland9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6hmt-kUhYkQ/V93GZrOuArI/AAAAAAACB58/8dTBbzUxGMwMwCFMa36fAEpdQh55cdCUgCPcB/s1600/britland10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="444" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6hmt-kUhYkQ/V93GZrOuArI/AAAAAAACB58/8dTBbzUxGMwMwCFMa36fAEpdQh55cdCUgCPcB/s640/britland10.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/09/land.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-7267633622960229621Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +00002016-06-30T17:13:24.027-07:00BritainBulgariaCanadaHistory of photographySnapshotsTurkeyA BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Dated Snapshots</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">John F. Kennedy</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sSKyIsGTJ7E/V3WpJa1djWI/AAAAAAACBJI/5IDbMXARXDMmQEAcB39sTCIp-pDjwS4XwCKgB/s1600/dates5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sSKyIsGTJ7E/V3WpJa1djWI/AAAAAAACBJI/5IDbMXARXDMmQEAcB39sTCIp-pDjwS4XwCKgB/s640/dates5.jpg" width="378" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The act of writing the date on snapshots has the effect of preserving the image not just in its immediate surroundings but globally. Knowing what we do about the past we can wonder (pointlessly) how people can appear so blasé with what’s unfolding in other parts of the world. We don’t know the exact day this photo was taken but in Saskatchewan at the very beginning of June 1936 the snow had melted from the prairies, the sun was out and this young foal born weeks earlier was still finding its feet. The boy, not a great deal older than the foal, certainly with more time to learn life’s valuable lessons, had a long summer vacation to look forward to. In Iraq, Princess Azza, sister of the King, was not so relaxed. She had recently married a hotel porter from Rhodes so was stripped of her royal privileges. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government in Nanking was pushing for an immediate declaration of war against Japan. Rumours were circulating that a British officer had killed a Japanese soldier. The British delegation denied reports and ascribed them to Chinese paranoia. In eighteen months time an estimated 40 000 Chinese civilians would be killed in the Nanking Massacre.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VSY82Kh7N84/V3WpJitX7JI/AAAAAAACBJI/03AYUrpZOBYpblv6I9oFYqXRFxPgRlBjwCKgB/s1600/dates1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VSY82Kh7N84/V3WpJitX7JI/AAAAAAACBJI/03AYUrpZOBYpblv6I9oFYqXRFxPgRlBjwCKgB/s640/dates1.jpg" width="392" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The earliest photo in this collection comes from Quebec and was taken on April 18, 1927. Over in Europe the weather was mostly fine with reports that air traffic over the English Channel was exceptionally busy. In Bath, Thomas Hampshire, a 48 year old chauffeur, was so terrified of an upcoming operation than he jumped out the hospital window, so saving the surgeon from another messy job but upsetting his wife greatly. In Antrim, Northern Ireland, Mr R. J. Anderson, president of the National Association of Headmasters let it be known what he thought of feminists and their male supporters. “No woman can train a boy in the habits of manliness. (Such a woman) might be an admirable proprietress of a Wild West saloon but we have no room for her in our boys’ schools.”&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sbdmvHB7A7E/V3WpJqhhvKI/AAAAAAACBJI/1BZdl7YBf_0Tu_GrmaJ7ugdmeyZNaLKPQCKgB/s1600/dates12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="422" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sbdmvHB7A7E/V3WpJqhhvKI/AAAAAAACBJI/1BZdl7YBf_0Tu_GrmaJ7ugdmeyZNaLKPQCKgB/s640/dates12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On April 27 1931 the prospect of war troubled Reverend James as he spoke at the Fellowship of Reconciliation at Bury St Edmunds. “If Christianity does not destroy war,” he warned, “then war will destroy Christianity”. Meanwhile in Belfast Edward Cullen’s murder trial opened. He had arrived in England four months earlier in the company of Ahmet Musa and Zara Agha, reputedly the World’s oldest man. A manhunt began when Musa’s naked body was discovered in a field outside of Carrickfergus. Across the water the World’s largest airship, the Akron, began her maiden voyage from Akron, Ohio.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uEa0IPKHhaA/V3WpJw-4D2I/AAAAAAACBJI/QTTigeXLqhQQi6xHTC_xvKRttuQ-eW1yQCKgB/s1600/dates4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uEa0IPKHhaA/V3WpJw-4D2I/AAAAAAACBJI/QTTigeXLqhQQi6xHTC_xvKRttuQ-eW1yQCKgB/s640/dates4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On October 5, 1935 the Dundee Courier was full of praise for Montreal, a city with an abundance of sunshine to appeal to sports lovers. In Blackburn Lancashire Robert Cotton took a slug of whisky to cure his cold. It helped so he took another, which also helped. An hour and two bottles later he was arrested after assaulting a fellow passenger on a bus. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>In Tokyo Colonel Yamada went home and committed ritual suicide after he shot dead General Negata of the War Office. In Melbourne Mr W. Smith showed off his giant marrow measuring over three feet long and swore beer was the best fertilizer he knew of.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yuy9ETMnrT0/V3WpKK5zrWI/AAAAAAACBJI/NDv3KMbFG8wiQe9tE6yprXACiZ-bCgZ2wCKgB/s1600/dates6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yuy9ETMnrT0/V3WpKK5zrWI/AAAAAAACBJI/NDv3KMbFG8wiQe9tE6yprXACiZ-bCgZ2wCKgB/s640/dates6.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On February 15, 1936 newspapers reported that across Turkey twelve people had frozen to death during blizzards that also killed thousands of cattle and destroyed hundreds of ships and boats. Meanwhile, in response to accusations its oil was fuelling the Italian war machine The U.S was considering an oil embargo. Spanish elections scheduled for the 16<sup>th</sup> had the rest of Europe on edge. The contest was essentially between communist and fascist parties and whoever won the result was a warning of an insecure future for the continent. In South Africa a bill was before the Government that would effectively disenfranchise black voters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uhUkhhF5TVo/V3WpMAPIefI/AAAAAAACBJI/kQZVW3PrQaYlU9Z435F-j4VE-SlE9_JhwCKgB/s1600/three645.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uhUkhhF5TVo/V3WpMAPIefI/AAAAAAACBJI/kQZVW3PrQaYlU9Z435F-j4VE-SlE9_JhwCKgB/s640/three645.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Members of the Twelfth Annual Congress for the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship were welcomed by President Ataturk in Ankara today. In Glasgow meanwhile a group of men from Barra Island in the Outer Hebrides made their first ever visit to the mainland. They were reportedly terrified by the sight of a tram. Paul Wharton, dress designer to Hollywood stars, was shot dead while his bed-bound mother could do nothing. The killer also shot dead William Howard while law professor Henry Bolte remains in a critical condition.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0iNl-WrrnnA/V3WpMBjmK8I/AAAAAAACBJI/vIibi1giF-cdZjL2R_XicVmBrg0f8tr_ACKgB/s1600/bulgsnap1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0iNl-WrrnnA/V3WpMBjmK8I/AAAAAAACBJI/vIibi1giF-cdZjL2R_XicVmBrg0f8tr_ACKgB/s640/bulgsnap1.jpg" width="448" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As war drags on the Allied press report that in the Jewish ghettoes across Axis controlled Europe starvation rations are in place. Other citizens have to accept 44 ounces or just over a kilo of bread a week while only children are given milk. At the Oswald Sat Zoo in Glasgow the performing lion walks a tightrope then plays a round of darts. Two million Japanese soldiers are reported to be occupying the islands just north of Australia. Chinese actor Kim Wong has been signed to play a Japanese soldier in a new MGM film.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--azaY40ZNXM/V3WpMU7-isI/AAAAAAACBJI/x83pJI_b_lMneKLG2WHDGtwMIiHBWuwsgCKgB/s1600/dates9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--azaY40ZNXM/V3WpMU7-isI/AAAAAAACBJI/x83pJI_b_lMneKLG2WHDGtwMIiHBWuwsgCKgB/s640/dates9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Twenty days after Germany signed the Instrument of Surrender, the Canadian Government has announced it will lift bans on Atlantic travel. In Birmingham meanwhile, Canadian soldier George C. Cummings had been caught breaking into a house and attempting to get away with over one thousand pounds worth of jewellery. Seventeen year old Robert Allsop has been charged with the attempted murder of an Italian prisoner of war. His boast that he killed Italians was not taken seriously by the magistrate, who did not think Allsop’s frustration that he had been too young to serve during the war was justification.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75JRdIZvc40/V3WpMpR7UQI/AAAAAAACBJI/oNZyOvDtO_gixkg9g50K5U6kcnTclccowCKgB/s1600/dates8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-75JRdIZvc40/V3WpMpR7UQI/AAAAAAACBJI/oNZyOvDtO_gixkg9g50K5U6kcnTclccowCKgB/s640/dates8.jpg" width="420" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">An American ship docked in Melbourne has a cargo of almost 500 000 bottles of beer. It had transported the bottles to the American base in Manila but arrived after peace had been signed and the Americans had moved out. No one knows what to do with the cargo. At Eaglesham in Scotland a fifteen year old boy has been charged with the murder of 29 year old Mrs Smith and her two children. Forty five women prisoners are on the third day of their strike at Portage la Prairie, west of Winnipeg.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYBWvixxcVU/V3WpM9uOUGI/AAAAAAACBJI/8JNCVFqnWGYHve2LXDbSSpxqjDptw6-MwCKgB/s1600/dates7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="444" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zYBWvixxcVU/V3WpM9uOUGI/AAAAAAACBJI/8JNCVFqnWGYHve2LXDbSSpxqjDptw6-MwCKgB/s640/dates7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On the first day of August 1948 China and Turkey play off against each other in football at the London Olympics. Meanwhile in Glasgow a golfer has been reported for playing a round with his shirt outside his trousers. In Australia the Country Party has submitted a plan to see Communism curbed, if not actually extinguished.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ylHjYlUmRBc/V3WpNBoWjvI/AAAAAAACBJI/QtJTz0BEd4QrgSEyJZxvNJDfMv8SZtzhwCKgB/s1600/vanishing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ylHjYlUmRBc/V3WpNBoWjvI/AAAAAAACBJI/QtJTz0BEd4QrgSEyJZxvNJDfMv8SZtzhwCKgB/s640/vanishing.jpg" width="434" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">No one is too sure how many were buried in the infirmary graveyard in Johnny Ball Lane in Bristol but there may be as many as two thousand in the relatively small plot of land. Demonstrations for independence by African nationalists have continued in Kampala. The International Committee will most likely decide that the time has come to readmit Japan to international sports federations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WzrnghpTU6k/V3WpNUD-6zI/AAAAAAACBJI/EE7_A_TpyX0dltST7cuf_8VOO_kgIskSACKgB/s1600/train267.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WzrnghpTU6k/V3WpNUD-6zI/AAAAAAACBJI/EE7_A_TpyX0dltST7cuf_8VOO_kgIskSACKgB/s640/train267.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Turkey has welcomed the new Republic of Indonesia while in Malaya two British patrols opened fire on each other. In Greece Queen Frederika has made an international appeal for the 28 000 children taken during the recent civil war. Meanwhile, the coalition government in France looks set for defeat only two months since it was formed. Meanwhile, poison, fences and traps failed but the recent heatwave in Australia may have killed most of the rabbit population.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Yf_GaEiPG0/V3WpNf8cs5I/AAAAAAACBJI/ulO1jU0dpmAeI_2nuGp2icDH3hxttLUzACKgB/s1600/dates10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Yf_GaEiPG0/V3WpNf8cs5I/AAAAAAACBJI/ulO1jU0dpmAeI_2nuGp2icDH3hxttLUzACKgB/s640/dates10.jpg" width="436" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A recently published report indicates that the crime rate has dropped in Britain, which is news to chaplain G. H. Fawell, who says there is a noticeable lapse in morals and rejection of traditional religion. Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies has launched the Jindivik Mark 1 pilotless aircraft. The Australian cricket team has suffered another early collapse against an English team. </span> <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: &quot;cambria&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt;">Meanwhile President Eisenhower, or “Ike” to most Americans, is warning the USSR, or “the Reds” to most Americans, to leave Pakistan well alone, or else.</span>&nbsp; <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><u> </u><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6302129229352008865"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160619.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6302129229352008865?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ulaPOqqYa70/V3WpJNwh_KE/AAAAAAACBJE/sMwlR5oSgVEyvBlJEh8ilMn4t9ugZrv6ACCo/s160-c/6302129229352008865" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6302129229352008865?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-brief-history-of-time.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-3615388528545750731Sun, 29 May 2016 23:12:00 +00002016-05-29T16:12:09.185-07:00architectureCitiesEgypthand-colouringHistory of photographyLehnert and Landrockreal photo postcardsANCIENT HISTORY<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Panoramic postcards of Egypt by Lehnert &amp; Landrock</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UnuYzWDstIQ/V0tw4UVwYBI/AAAAAAACA60/ll70K4jBb3Emw8t_ykKjpu_2I5iCz3-vwCKgB/s1600/landlbookmark3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UnuYzWDstIQ/V0tw4UVwYBI/AAAAAAACA60/ll70K4jBb3Emw8t_ykKjpu_2I5iCz3-vwCKgB/s640/landlbookmark3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">When Rudolph Lehnert and Ernest Landrock moved their photographic studio from Tunis to Cairo in 1924 they were announcing to anyone listening that Egypt’s capital was also the cultural capital of the Middle East. Not that they decided this: the year before, Howard Carter and his team had broken into Tutankhamen’s tomb and Ancient Egypt had once again become the most exciting idea on the planet. In far off Hastings, builders excavating a basement discovered some odd glyphs in a dingy tunnel and for a moment the theory that ancient Egyptians or Phoenicians had visited the place was kicked around. The place called Ancient Egypt, or at least the idea of it, had seldom been out of fashion’s eye in the last fifty years but now it was back centre stage. There were at least half a dozen other companies in Cairo producing real photo postcards for the European market but Lehnert &amp; Landrock would become the best known.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S2e-G_7yF1g/V0tw4bvhEtI/AAAAAAACA60/oi80qvrrg8oJ_mlTwyiRYXlZODEYfLI5QCKgB/s1600/landlbookmark7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S2e-G_7yF1g/V0tw4bvhEtI/AAAAAAACA60/oi80qvrrg8oJ_mlTwyiRYXlZODEYfLI5QCKgB/s640/landlbookmark7.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Lehnert, the photographer, had certainly worked in Egypt before the company opened shop there but once it did, business flourished. We can think of its halcyon years as coming between 1924 and the beginning of the war. Although a great enthusiasm among the British for German product seems unpatriotic, even love of country has its limits. There was a booming international market for shots of L&amp;L’s most renowned genre: nude Bedouin women, and the British were driving demand as much as anyone else. But anyway, we’re not here to talk about that, or even more dubious genres the company marketed but rather the flip side; Egypt as a phenomenon of cultural sophistication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FSrSk69E3f0/V0tw4t1PP0I/AAAAAAACA60/XOodcTVi6KwCDmwQIEYpFQApGH8mUzL2ACKgB/s1600/landlbookmark2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FSrSk69E3f0/V0tw4t1PP0I/AAAAAAACA60/XOodcTVi6KwCDmwQIEYpFQApGH8mUzL2ACKgB/s640/landlbookmark2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">From the beginning, postcards were the familiar size by which we know them, approximately 3½ x 6 inches, because they fitted the standard envelopes for informal correspondence. In some countries the laws sounded specific; the post card had to be ‘no more than’ or ‘less than’ or ‘at least’, but this only meant that anything that fitted within the required dimensions was legitimate. Publishers produced midget size and giant size postcards but the most common irregular format was the bookmark size, and though bookmarks of stage stars were popular, landscapes and street views have become the most enduring, especially the bookmark postcards from Cairo that Lehnert and Landrock produced.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xs3-ClPzNsE/V0tw4yDSEXI/AAAAAAACA60/bl9i1ABXn-cOAGFAJFiYgobLzKJD7coOACKgB/s1600/landlbookmark4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Xs3-ClPzNsE/V0tw4yDSEXI/AAAAAAACA60/bl9i1ABXn-cOAGFAJFiYgobLzKJD7coOACKgB/s640/landlbookmark4.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">One of the company’s achievements was that it managed to make Egypt look how everyone imagined it to be; a land still touched by its ancient past, with oases of palm trees providing shade from which to contemplate the pyramids, maze-like souks, the stalls piled high with ornate rugs and silverware, and watched over by hawk-eyed Muslims. One hundred years ago, the abiding image of Muslims was of devout, silent and impassive people. Of course, not long before in the Sudan and southern parts of Egypt Muslims were fanatics who needed to be suppressed with violence if necessary, but that was now the past. In popular culture the siege of Khartoum was just another heroic chapter in the history of the British Empire. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EdzsfX7_j3U/V0tw4z3MbnI/AAAAAAACA60/7av9GcSC4vYmiPU-4RL7pdU7N7Kj7uOYgCKgB/s1600/landlbookmark5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EdzsfX7_j3U/V0tw4z3MbnI/AAAAAAACA60/7av9GcSC4vYmiPU-4RL7pdU7N7Kj7uOYgCKgB/s640/landlbookmark5.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">From 1882 until 1922 Egypt was officially a British protectorate (and less officially into the 1950s). This explains why Cairo, a city inhabited by Egyptians since 969 CE would have a ‘native quarter’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This was both a ghetto and a slum – neither being necessarily the same thing – separate from areas occupied by Europeans, Armenians, Alexandrine Greeks, Jews and Ottoman Turks. Egypt at this time, well, until 1914, was also a khedivate of the Ottoman Empire. The condition for Egyptians was something like being the child of two parents whose contempt for each other was outmatched by that for their offspring. Said children are usually destined for a miserable adulthood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FFi6UAKE5E0/V0tw5A0Lq-I/AAAAAAACA60/vazLBpwPiEYyMbA7VPQFMJURG8egTyheACKgB/s1600/landlbookmark1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FFi6UAKE5E0/V0tw5A0Lq-I/AAAAAAACA60/vazLBpwPiEYyMbA7VPQFMJURG8egTyheACKgB/s640/landlbookmark1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Cleopatra</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Khartoum</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Greatest Story Ever Told</i>: in the 1960s Egypt became the canvas for epic visions, though ‘bombastic’ might be a better adjective. There’s a suspicion, and maybe nothing more, that one influence was these panoramic views; well they share the same format and there is something about the panorama, no matter how small, that speaks of the vast – in time as well as space. To create this image the studio simply took a standard format negative and cropped what wasn’t needed. There isn’t the distortion a genuine panoramic camera would produce. Still, removing whatever was extraneous and leaving the palms, the camel, the cart and the porter suggests a scene that could take place anytime in the last 200 years. Interestingly this is titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kasr el Nil Bridge</i> but it may be the one it replaced in 1931, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kobri el Gezira</i>. Photos of that one have the palms but they are absent in views of the later bridge.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuSqMjeOTGA/V0tw7KkBQZI/AAAAAAACA60/dvc3pafH13sloEuOQz6XUjI1sBqExOdMQCKgB/s1600/landlbookmark6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuSqMjeOTGA/V0tw7KkBQZI/AAAAAAACA60/dvc3pafH13sloEuOQz6XUjI1sBqExOdMQCKgB/s640/landlbookmark6.jpg" width="330" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The Orientalist argument says that these views tell us more about the consumers than the place, which should be beyond dispute by now, but what after all do they tell us about Cairo? Where, for one thing, are the crowds? Today the city is so densely packed that a view like this one seems impossible even at unlikely hours. Was it really so magically empty in the 1920s? No. As far back at the 1500s, when Europeans began arguing over the biggest, the richest and the most powerful cities in the world, three were inevitably ignored: Peking, Bombay and Cairo. As engines of civilization they were derided, despite the monumental evidence opposing that, and despite the popularity of Ancient Egypt stemming from the great desire of London, Paris, Rome etc to be seen as the inevitable heir to its culture. So no; this is not the vast, hectic and noisy city tourists encountered but somewhere ancient and austere: the place they came to find.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6290245414367288673"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160427.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6290245414367288673?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SqYIC2OzWwI/V0tw4JFkXWE/AAAAAAACA64/kr7lsgT0FQY9VFuz0iGLo01V53qywHLagCCo/s160-c/6290245414367288673" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6290245414367288673?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ANCIENT HISTORY</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/05/ancient-history.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-1105370522384144309Sat, 14 May 2016 23:02:00 +00002016-05-29T16:14:16.388-07:00CanadaEnvironmentHistory of photographyminiature viewsreal photo postcardsSnapshotsthe seaROCK OF AGES<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Snapshots, postcards and miniature views of </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Percé</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rock in Quebec.</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“I don't see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they're there and anyone can photograph them if they're prepared to hang around and wait for the light.</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">”</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">David Bailey</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g3z_f7CC-Z8/VzepuLutSHI/AAAAAAACA5Q/zxtsEecgj28wpQu5iS3dX7LKJoM7hgvygCKgB/s1600/perce13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="514" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g3z_f7CC-Z8/VzepuLutSHI/AAAAAAACA5Q/zxtsEecgj28wpQu5iS3dX7LKJoM7hgvygCKgB/s640/perce13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">350 million years ago, as the Devonian period drew to its end, taking with it various armour plated fish but giving the world forests and reptiles in return, a limestone scarp emerged on what was then Euramerica, a landmass to the northwest of Gondwanaland. Earth was still poorly defined although many of the sea creatures are recognizable as ancestors of our sharks, newts and eels.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RCi0YmpUTbw/VzepuOBhWpI/AAAAAAACA5Q/i-SS4FO3aZEkG7XhB6FdztXVs5gGTz6AwCKgB/s1600/perce4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="440" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RCi0YmpUTbw/VzepuOBhWpI/AAAAAAACA5Q/i-SS4FO3aZEkG7XhB6FdztXVs5gGTz6AwCKgB/s640/perce4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Go forward a few hundred million years, to what is known as the late or Pennsylvanian era of the Carboniferous period and something roughly resembling North America is taking shape. The scarp is made of limestone, itself the product of billions of dead shellfish. Unlike granite it is made of organic, once living things, but like chalk, which is a form of limestone, and sandstone, which is another sedimentary rock, it is easily shaped by wind and water.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BJDZo4DRHFI/VzepuSiLE3I/AAAAAAACA5Q/xqgumVPrNF4gBn3G3uhwdeQcwJFWW7_fwCKgB/s1600/perce5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BJDZo4DRHFI/VzepuSiLE3I/AAAAAAACA5Q/xqgumVPrNF4gBn3G3uhwdeQcwJFWW7_fwCKgB/s640/perce5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">As this thing called North America finally emerges from the water, shaking itself dry like some shaggy hound, a small promontory near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River breaks away, or more accurately is severed, from the mainland. Storms being considerably more powerful in those primeval times, this could have happened overnight. The arches however were the result of gradual erosion and took more time to appear.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8kfXXzSy0c/VzepurGhSHI/AAAAAAACA5Q/fkOxUVD3yEEsHctwzdFdAexz8adEKqJAACKgB/s1600/perce8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8kfXXzSy0c/VzepurGhSHI/AAAAAAACA5Q/fkOxUVD3yEEsHctwzdFdAexz8adEKqJAACKgB/s640/perce8.jpg" width="420" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Jump forward to 2500BCE, around the time Gautama Buddha is preaching in India, and the Mi’kmaq arrive in the area. By now the <span style="background: white;">Gaspé</span></span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;Peninsular has the same shape it does today. No doubt the Mi’kmaq give the rock a sacred status. All over the world, from Uluru to Kilimanjaro to Angel Falls, distinctive natural features develop sacred status. In the case of </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Percé Rock, this would have something to do with its appearance, but with the arches already formed it gave the Mi’kmaq a more tangible benefit. The currents circling the rock and flowing through the arches would have attracted certain types of kelp, which in turn attracted one kind of fish that became prey to another. In other words the fishing would have been excellent, for humans and birds. Depending on the season, ducks, geese, pigeons and gannets were in abundance. Why would a Mi’kmaq move?&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s2FOmudLI7U/Vzepu-gWfwI/AAAAAAACA5Q/81tgSgijqFw4jpu-XSNrJokHjq9bwFaTQCKgB/s1600/perce14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="382" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s2FOmudLI7U/Vzepu-gWfwI/AAAAAAACA5Q/81tgSgijqFw4jpu-XSNrJokHjq9bwFaTQCKgB/s640/perce14.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">In 1534 French ships under the command of Jacques Cartier appeared. He was probably not the first European known to the locals. Fishermen from Bristol and the Breton coast had been working in the vicinity for at least fifty years and it is possible that Vikings had been in the area before that. The site at l’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland was a relatively short distance by boat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P8AuGJzwlsA/Vzepu-yA-JI/AAAAAAACA5Q/76ztV1lI_hgrNX98CQTC5sA3EvOdMnTxgCKgB/s1600/perce1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P8AuGJzwlsA/Vzepu-yA-JI/AAAAAAACA5Q/76ztV1lI_hgrNX98CQTC5sA3EvOdMnTxgCKgB/s640/perce1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">There is a particular legend associated with the first French settlers at Percé, a rather unimaginative one about a too sensitive young sap and his lost love, but the story of Marguerite de la Rocque may not be legend at all, or only bits of it are. In 1541 she was on the expedition to settle New France, as the French called Canada, led by her uncle Jean-Francois de Roberval. Having offended him by her carry-ons with one of the crewmen, she, said crewman and her nurse were cast off on the so-called Island of Demons. This is generally considered to be Belle Island, further along the coast off the Newfoundland Coast but the point to think about is not the precise location but that name; Isle of Demons. One explanation for it is that during the autumn intense fogs blew down from the arctic and to French sailors the calls of thousands of gannets piercing the mists sounded decidedly demonic by anyone’s reckoning. The coast down to Percé was considered supernaturally dangerous, which it was given the extreme weather visited upon it. You can see why the French colonists kept pressing in until they reached what became Quebec City. Before that it was a coastline of madness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S3EXEz-z8r8/Vzepgi_MAQI/AAAAAAACA5E/Nxsy89Yte2E0L5gMle03uEw72L7LOn8vgCKgB/s1600/perce3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="628" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S3EXEz-z8r8/Vzepgi_MAQI/AAAAAAACA5E/Nxsy89Yte2E0L5gMle03uEw72L7LOn8vgCKgB/s640/perce3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Up until 1848 visitors to the rock saw two arches. The pinnacle at the back was attached to the main body until it crumbled that year. Because limestone is so soft the features could be said to be in a constant state of change. During World War 2 Andre Breton stayed in Percé and described the rock as “a razorblade rising out of the water … a marvellous iceberg of moonstone”. Although its sheer cliffs stop any major assault by tourists, it is likely that soon the only way to contemplate it will be from a safe distance, like Breton did. Not that the government is so concerned about protecting the rock but rather its soft texture and fragility will sooner or later seriously injure someone, which inevitably turns into legal suits.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UPI_z2tQpLI/VzepvPuM1xI/AAAAAAACA5Q/9hNc50I5Ih4Q26kOojJxEdEtRC-aCbSUQCKgB/s1600/perce15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UPI_z2tQpLI/VzepvPuM1xI/AAAAAAACA5Q/9hNc50I5Ih4Q26kOojJxEdEtRC-aCbSUQCKgB/s640/perce15.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Finding photographs in Canada of Percé aren’t hard. It is one of the most photographed sites in the country and has become iconographic of Canada’s east coast the way that Uluru has come to be an emblem of Australia. The images in the gallery include snapshots, a postcard, miniature views and one panoramic view of the rock and the village, possibly taken on behalf of the Quebec or Canadian Government.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6284678180164852641"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160427.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6284678180164852641?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4yRY_hllEoQ/Vzepgdhf26E/AAAAAAACA5M/P9w6ewfuoy48UAz6IiGcwP04FOAevzIigCCoQAQ/s160-c/6284678180164852641" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/6284678180164852641?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ROCK OF AGES</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/05/rock-of-ages.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-7022841868222269821Sun, 17 Apr 2016 01:02:00 +00002016-04-16T18:03:00.244-07:00CanadacarshighwaysHistory of photographylandscapesSnapshotsROAD TO NOWHERE<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>A 1950s Canadian Road Trip</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Jack Kerouac: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On The Road</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZj7NVZr3Cg/VxLQWQY9nGI/AAAAAAACAwc/nqF-RzT58wIS7s3CufLtgSE0PtBBuTcrQCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="600" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZj7NVZr3Cg/VxLQWQY9nGI/AAAAAAACAwc/nqF-RzT58wIS7s3CufLtgSE0PtBBuTcrQCKgB/s640/triptotoronto1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In our popular mythology the road trip is a metaphor for the series of life changing events we need to experience. Usually they take place just before adulthood; so some indigenous cultures have initiation rituals where the transition is permanently recorded by way of scars or tattoos, we get into a car and drive. The journey’s distance and duration aren’t fixed; the point is that at the end the protagonist’s life has been changed, for the better. He or she is wiser now.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3K9HHfg-AA/VxLQZJCdCcI/AAAAAAACAwc/EBE0B5i6BeYgnXlo_69pwrzQHZo61V3uQCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3K9HHfg-AA/VxLQZJCdCcI/AAAAAAACAwc/EBE0B5i6BeYgnXlo_69pwrzQHZo61V3uQCKgB/s640/triptotoronto3.jpg" width="620" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">In the 1950s two people took a road trip to Toronto and one of them photographed it. The album was printed in Victoria but it was bought sixty years later in Montreal so we can’t be sure where they left from. Most of the photographs look like they were taken on that ubiquitous road that criss-crosses North America: mountains in the distance, motels and diners lining the sides; for all we know we could be in North Ontario or southern Arizona.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vEND4Qj6pbE/VxLQYZ_Q_JI/AAAAAAACAwc/AOm9HuIBadIlD3F-TgCRZxCYVh1htTl1gCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vEND4Qj6pbE/VxLQYZ_Q_JI/AAAAAAACAwc/AOm9HuIBadIlD3F-TgCRZxCYVh1htTl1gCKgB/s640/triptotoronto2.jpg" width="614" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">But the real subject that holds our attention is the woman. Looking to be in her mid to late fifties, she holds<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>more or less the same pose in each photo, not because she doesn’t have the imagination to think of another but because the photos and her role in them are purely functional. They want photos of the places they visited along the way, and a reminder that they were there but nothing more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mxh7_btotdU/VxLQZuUhaSI/AAAAAAACAwk/QbxmvHV6v_Ey9hU80APVm62R1GO2TPurgCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mxh7_btotdU/VxLQZuUhaSI/AAAAAAACAwk/QbxmvHV6v_Ey9hU80APVm62R1GO2TPurgCKgB/s640/triptotoronto4.jpg" width="622" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The theory is that this was their first trip across Canada, and possibly in their first car. She looks to have been born close to the turn of the century and it’s easy to forget that people from her generation had their youth taken away by two world wars and a depression. It isn’t uncommon to read of people in Britain and Australia who couldn’t afford a car until the economic boom of the 1950s. Even when they had the money, time wasn’t always on their side. Anyone old enough to have people from this generation for grandparents remembers perplexed conversations about leaving lights on, why having a bath every night was normal and explaining that cars these days didn’t have a choke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VkT9TXvhiCY/VxLQap_kGvI/AAAAAAACAwk/Tj8_QZjxOfYPDhuHEaaWMeimTs1Au4dXgCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VkT9TXvhiCY/VxLQap_kGvI/AAAAAAACAwk/Tj8_QZjxOfYPDhuHEaaWMeimTs1Au4dXgCKgB/s640/triptotoronto6.jpg" width="630" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Coming into being at the beginning of the decade that really gave us the contemporary <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>road saga, his little album is unaware of the stereotype. This is a road trip without any great revelations because of course they only happen in the world of fiction. Real road trips in Canada and Australia involve days of unchanging scenery, pulling into motels around sunset with frazzled nerves and short tempers and falling into conversations with strangers in bars about nothing at all. In films the conversation ends with the protagonist staring into his beer and realizing what he has to do. In real life he yawns and says he must go to bed now, ‘cause it’s a big day tomorrow with another 500 kms of low hills and dry scrub ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BjK4I7lgVfw/VxLQbZUnoCI/AAAAAAACAwk/Dy9qY6RtU38besWm8NEGqhqFKIeq7UQNgCKgB/s1600/triptotoronto7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BjK4I7lgVfw/VxLQbZUnoCI/AAAAAAACAwk/Dy9qY6RtU38besWm8NEGqhqFKIeq7UQNgCKgB/s640/triptotoronto7.jpg" width="630" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I suspect this is only one from several albums Belchers of Victoria B.C printed from the road trip. Even if it covered a relatively short distance – Ottawa to Toronto for example - there ought to be more photos from the rest of the journey somewhere. Not that we need them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The story here is enough.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ROADTONOWHERE"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE </span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160412.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ROADTONOWHERE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IY31gtA5Cew/VxLQVPlSCSE/AAAAAAACAws/Cgmjiuu0Qu4AZZIsBUk2OxTrsNGCvrWWQCCoQAQ/s160-c-Ic42/ROADTONOWHERE" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ROADTONOWHERE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ROAD TO NOWHERE</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/04/road-to-nowhere.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-418631092126178223Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:53:00 +00002016-03-31T17:53:43.613-07:00ArchaeologyBritainCitiesGreeceHarold SanbornHeritageHistory of photographyIranreal photo postcardsUSAGODS GRAVES AND SCHOLARS<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Archaeology and postcards</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">“The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Michael Ondaatje</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-23x0Tx1MMnw/Vv3EDjYGLFI/AAAAAAACAbg/hccgfyiWkaYWrlES_INX5Gfudtj5Ll6xw/s1600/archaeology7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-23x0Tx1MMnw/Vv3EDjYGLFI/AAAAAAACAbg/hccgfyiWkaYWrlES_INX5Gfudtj5Ll6xw/s640/archaeology7.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">There is now a long, visible and well researched history of the relationship between archaeology and photography. Mostly it is framed by concepts of power, so the first studios in Cairo and Constantinople that sold albums of images of pyramids and temples understood the connection between the places that European societies claimed to have come from and the places they now claimed as their own. The history of Postcards and archaeology follows the same course, with crucial derivations. The most important happened when institutions including state run and private museums took control of the images. All their archaeological postcards are political. The customer who bought a postcard from the Acropolis Museum in Athens and the person who received it were being offered a state sanctioned view of Greece’s long history; not just a statue but a reminder of Western Civilization’s origins, and its debts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4-qs8BPzulo/Vv3EEG63pNI/AAAAAAACAbg/tpQYjjqIVSAXT1E5x9Lfrwif2OEQz0Yhg/s1600/archaeology5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4-qs8BPzulo/Vv3EEG63pNI/AAAAAAACAbg/tpQYjjqIVSAXT1E5x9Lfrwif2OEQz0Yhg/s640/archaeology5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Archaeological photographs used to depend on two simple definitions. One was that the object pictured was dug up, or somehow recovered. The other was that it was old, preferably pre-historic, or before the written word. So long as one of these could be applied then the image at hand was archaeological. That has changed. Archaeology today has to be neither dug up nor particularly old. Even the most encompassing definition, that the item in question is tangible doesn’t matter anymore. Some media archaeologists live in a world of pure theory. Contemporary definitions still ride on an old motif however; that image of the archaeologist stumbling across some lost city in the jungle, or wiping the dust from a wall of ancient glyphs, but modern archaeologists have turned out to be a bunch of spoilsports. Not only has Stonehenge nothing to do with druidism, all the evidence unearthed recently suggests it was the winter solstice that drew the crowds.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vrw6SfCxf9U/Vv3EEq7rcQI/AAAAAAACAbg/uOnH_J1JNT8mMee-wywba5BA9301v-9kQ/s1600/archaeology6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vrw6SfCxf9U/Vv3EEq7rcQI/AAAAAAACAbg/uOnH_J1JNT8mMee-wywba5BA9301v-9kQ/s640/archaeology6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Chanctonbury Ring is a famous Iron Age fort in Sussex, hidden behind the copse on the hilltop. There are dozens of hill forts across England, built in the centuries before the Romans arrived, when available technology meant the hill was the easiest position to defend and to seek protection. With this image we see the hill fort’s position within the landscape, from the point of view of either an attacker or someone who would find sanctuary within it. Just how closely it resembles the landscape of the Iron Age is uncertain. There appears to be a large house in the centre just below the ring. Apart from that, the vegetation may be mostly native but we know that one impact of empire on the nation itself was a vast number of introduced plant species. During the late 18<sup>th</sup> and early 19<sup>th</sup> century it became fashionable to cultivate a kind of wilderness in Sussex, so areas would be set aside and allowed to grow into what was imagined an ancestral landscape. This would never have been allowed during the Iron Age. One thing we have learned about the Neolithic British is how enthusiastic they were for land clearance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mFyfp9CkcEk/Vv3EFICDtRI/AAAAAAACAbg/3xJd7nxFXT0ge_pPjH4MwiBBF3AQorpJg/s1600/archaeology4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mFyfp9CkcEk/Vv3EFICDtRI/AAAAAAACAbg/3xJd7nxFXT0ge_pPjH4MwiBBF3AQorpJg/s640/archaeology4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">In World War 1 Osbert Crawford was attached to a survey corps, reading reconnaissance photographs of the trenches taken from aeroplanes. As an archaeologist in the 1920s he took the same idea, returned to the skies and turned his cameras on to the English landscape. From the air he was able to identify the prehistoric avenue connecting Stonehenge to the Avon River, which apart from everything else, expanded Stonehenge’s place in the landscape. Around the same time, the aerial photographic company, Aerofilms, was established. Aerofilms turned to publishing postcards, with archaeological sites one of the company’s most popular subjects. It isn’t hard to see why. Viewed from the air, the perspective of sites like Maiden Castle was literally transformed. It was more than a matter of reading the shape of the site from a new angle; it was also about reading the site’s context within the landscape. Aerial photography was the most important innovation in archaeology before the advent of LIDAR and its importance was transmitted through postcards.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_USMTFQxFPc/Vv3EFi4Yo7I/AAAAAAACAbg/nGw9PA0cGdMvG7v7QYFNo6q33K5Y0X5ow/s1600/archaeology3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_USMTFQxFPc/Vv3EFi4Yo7I/AAAAAAACAbg/nGw9PA0cGdMvG7v7QYFNo6q33K5Y0X5ow/s640/archaeology3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Reading books like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bones</i> by Elaine DeLay, you begin to think there must be no more miserable job on Earth than to be an archaeologist in the Americas. Fights between the traditionalists and revisionists are preliminary bouts compared to what happens once First Nations communities get involved, and it doesn’t require paranoia to detect the hidden hand of government agencies behind some of the biggest disputes. In 1998 the archaeologist Brian Billman said that his research into the Anasazi culture in Mesa Verde indicated an outbreak of cannibalism around the period 1150 to 1250 CE. For decades archaeologists had been seeking answers as to how and why the Anasazi culture collapsed so dramatically during that time. Cannibalism, Billman argued, was a symptom, not a cause, which is usually reckoned to be severe droughts brought on by some localized form of climate change, but it was not news that local indigenous people wanted to hear. A well-worn conflict re-emerged, between archaeologists who believed nothing should be immune to inquiry and First Nations people who responded that aspects of culture were private. Well, those were the basic position, minus the truckload of nuances usually dumped on these situations. For some First Nations people, a postcard view like this is problematic. It brings in tourists and relic hunters when what they would rather have is for history to follow its natural course and these ruins be allowed to slowly return to dust.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lmt0Hkwtlfs/Vv3EFyXjOXI/AAAAAAACAbg/rcyKb-qMj-o1VfjPl9wWY6zSTQ_gIi_QQ/s1600/archaeology8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lmt0Hkwtlfs/Vv3EFyXjOXI/AAAAAAACAbg/rcyKb-qMj-o1VfjPl9wWY6zSTQ_gIi_QQ/s640/archaeology8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">Call that attitude wilful intransigence if you want, but when you see photos like this, it makes sense. For a long time one of the drawcards to Teotihuacan and other Aztec sites was their association with human sacrifice. The architecture became mere set design. The Aztec Empire existed for a brief time before the Spanish conquest. Before then it was a multi-lingual and fluid confederation of cultures. The first reports of Aztec ceremonies came from the Spanish; to which details were later added by people who may have technically been Aztec but weren’t necessarily loyal to an idea. The spectators seen in the background would have paid to see an ‘authentic traditional Aztec’ performance but since none of the primary sources were trustworthy it was more accurately a recreation of European ideas of what a human sacrifice should look like – think Maureen O’Sullivan tied to a pole while Victor Mature struggles vainly with his captors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Authenticity is a word archaeologists and historians try to avoid. Inevitably it is used to mean something directly opposite to the dictionary definition.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S0cx0Qgip48/Vv3EGqvON-I/AAAAAAACAbg/ItFuwdh_MW0uv_yLu3Sj8zDUQlM1Ox5vQ/s1600/archaeology2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-S0cx0Qgip48/Vv3EGqvON-I/AAAAAAACAbg/ItFuwdh_MW0uv_yLu3Sj8zDUQlM1Ox5vQ/s640/archaeology2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">The question of whether archaeology is an art or a science still raises its fuzzy little head though increasingly the revelations provided by technology such as LIDAR push it towards the latter. A good archaeologist need not know much about oxygen isotope analysis but he or she ought to know someone who does. It wasn’t always the case. Before archaeology there were antiquarians and orientalists, who travelled out to sites like Persepolis, sketched the monuments, collected artifacts and proposed theories. Archaeology was an art because it was romantic. With respectability however came responsibility and by the turn of last century very specific skills were required. Being able to read cuneiform was pretty much useless for everything in this world except an excavation at Persepolis and there it was essential. This image you feel tries to evoke that era when travellers might stumble upon some ruined city on the plain then gaze upon its monuments with a philosophical terror.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E2H9-v2qXUQ/Vv3EHIJW_hI/AAAAAAACAbg/vM-dvDBgsTgM4TKJfolOAry8CVV7bkQuw/s1600/gardentomb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E2H9-v2qXUQ/Vv3EHIJW_hI/AAAAAAACAbg/vM-dvDBgsTgM4TKJfolOAry8CVV7bkQuw/s640/gardentomb.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">A seemingly innocuous image of some ancient foundations but what it presents is a history of archaeology C1860s to 1940s, and then what was to follow. Not all middle eastern archaeology in the 19<sup>th</sup> century focused on the Bible but so much of it did that it is hard to tell these days whether we are dealing with scholars or fanatics. Take this scrap of wall and the bare framework of a hole. During the 1850s and 60s Orientalists were busy arguing over the site of the hill of Calvary when a number of tombs, including this one were excavated. Suddenly the world had a tomb just below the place then known as Skull Hill, and this according to some was close enough to the biblical account to suffice. There are dozens of very logical reasons why this cannot be the tomb Jesus was placed after being taken down from the cross, but that hasn’t stopped people visiting it as part of their crucifixion tour. Back around the 1940s when this photo was taken the politics surrounding the site were almost non-existent, or at least treated as such. Today while Jews and Muslims fight their battles, lesser known but often violent episodes break out here between Greek, Coptic, Roman, Protestant and other branches of the Christian faith. It no longer matters whether or not this is the actual site. What does is that some people badly feel the need for one.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O6qJ6FDLuGM/Vv3EHuveeOI/AAAAAAACAbg/nsBB4a41-PEl67iWErmgLrLAmi6uKBCgA/s1600/archaeology1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O6qJ6FDLuGM/Vv3EHuveeOI/AAAAAAACAbg/nsBB4a41-PEl67iWErmgLrLAmi6uKBCgA/s640/archaeology1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">For a while there, we in the west could look upon archaeology’s tainted past with righteous shame. Museums throughout Europe were full of plunder that rightfully should be returned. The arguments were complex; there’d be no point in having them otherwise. How, for sinister example, could the British Museum and various medical colleges justify all those crates of remains of indigenous people, shipped out from Australia in the 19<sup>th</sup> century only to be dumped in the cellars and left unopened? Well it couldn’t, and so some were repatriated and everyone put on happy faces. But what about the Elgin Marbles? That was different. Athens was horribly polluted and returning them (right thing, of course) could see these prized sculptures crumble to dust like Dracula in the sunlight, (so wrong thing). The argument changed in 2015, when ISIS took control of Palmyra in Syria and began looting and destroying it. Palmyra represented the very foundations of Western Civilization; from its origins in the Bronze Age to becoming one of the centres of Eastern Greek culture, to one of the great Roman cities and then a major point on the Silk Road. The tragedy of Palmyra’s destruction was partly ameliorated by all that 19<sup>th</sup> century plunder on our part. Suddenly it looked like foresight that our museums, archaeologists and sundry scholars had been practising all along. Thank God we got all that stuff out in time. The cases for and against repatriation have ceased for the time being, and it is unlikely we will hear them for a long time, at least so far as the Middle East and Africa are concerned. In the meantime, London dealers will continue to keep the market in looted antiquities alive. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GODSGRAVESANDSCHOLARS"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160329.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GODSGRAVESANDSCHOLARS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5szZjS4l4ZE/Vv3EDNcVTVE/AAAAAAACAbg/bEh0Ze8VXHA/s160-c-Ic42/GODSGRAVESANDSCHOLARS" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GODSGRAVESANDSCHOLARS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">GODS GRAVES AND SCHOLARS</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/03/gods-graves-and-scholars.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-6699955401029558576Sat, 19 Mar 2016 23:59:00 +00002016-03-19T17:00:19.700-07:00animalsCanadaCowboysEnvironmentHistory of photographylandscapesrural lifesnaphotsBAD LAND<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Snapshots from the Canadian Prairies</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-indent: 1.0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">In the winter time when we can't farm</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Me and Junny-Mae sit arm in arm</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">By a big ole fire and honeymoon</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">A little bit south of Saskatoon</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sonny James; “A Little bit South of Saskatoon”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m3fjh4xvFkc/Vu3jmAapSfI/AAAAAAACAY8/StzciVUZM3AzAgUjUq6HQiqk6tXzkRctQ/s1600/saskatchewan13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="466" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m3fjh4xvFkc/Vu3jmAapSfI/AAAAAAACAY8/StzciVUZM3AzAgUjUq6HQiqk6tXzkRctQ/s640/saskatchewan13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-left: 1.0cm;"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">’Horse Power’, Tendall’s Ranch, S. Sask.</span></i> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Milestone, Saskatchewan, a town of twenty two streets just north of the Montana border; maybe not the centre of the prairies but when the world is this flat and featureless there is no centre. Looking down on Milestone with Google Maps we see a small triangle on Highway 39, surrounded by a chequerboard of precisely measured out squares of wheat fields, so exact in their dimensions to be heartbreaking. Is there anywhere more desolate to live on this planet than Saskatchewan’s prairies? There are towns in Australia more geographically isolated but the terrain is not so relentlessly unchanging, and they don’t have the long winters that used to drive people indoors for months at a time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PxLNUtKuz0o/Vu3jmaQrBXI/AAAAAAACAY8/37U6gQQ8oM4kfpH7NKmOTqN5EU8eBd9ng/s1600/saskatchewan14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PxLNUtKuz0o/Vu3jmaQrBXI/AAAAAAACAY8/37U6gQQ8oM4kfpH7NKmOTqN5EU8eBd9ng/s640/saskatchewan14.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Tendall Ranch, Saskatchewan</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">These photos come from a single, loose collection, centred around the Tendall family ranch at Milestone but some also taken in Ontario and Quebec. They can be broken onto three, with the earliest, including the first three, taken in Milestone around 1915, two more from Ontario in the 1920s and the rest back at the Tendall ranch in the 1930s. The photographer wasn’t a Tendall. Local records show a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tindall</i> family around Milestone but information on the family is somewhat sparse. There are no Tendalls or Tindalls in the Milestone Cemetery although there are several Tindalls buried in Weyburn, a town further down Highway 39. More about the family later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ksBgFaOpiNg/Vu3joHTCbLI/AAAAAAACAY8/VTIqNSgaI0MYcjhDxgfdxSRy6i60B635w/s1600/saskatchewan4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ksBgFaOpiNg/Vu3joHTCbLI/AAAAAAACAY8/VTIqNSgaI0MYcjhDxgfdxSRy6i60B635w/s640/saskatchewan4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Somewhere in S. Saskatchewan. A young friend of Roy Carson Circa 1915 (Fishing trip – see poles on car).</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">By 1915 it may have been historically too late to be considered a pioneer on the prairies but whatever comforts technology had brought were at best meagre. The Model T wasn’t so much a car yet as an idea of what one could be after basic problems were figured out. People old enough to have travelled in stagecoaches didn’t see a great deal of improvement so far as comfort was concerned. In 1908 the Provincial government established the Department of Telephones with the intention of connecting all the towns on the prairies. The telephone would have alleviated isolation, especially in the winter.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2PMB7xISDQ/Vu3jod58rNI/AAAAAAACAY8/4UnW0Fs8LfUbigRsX32V5aJkdNbPaVaZg/s1600/saskatchewan1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="418" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2PMB7xISDQ/Vu3jod58rNI/AAAAAAACAY8/4UnW0Fs8LfUbigRsX32V5aJkdNbPaVaZg/s640/saskatchewan1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Eva Carson at Rockliffe, Ont.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">In January and February the temperature on the prairies can hit -40 and stay there for weeks on end – or as someone put it recently; from November to May. In Canada it isn’t the temperature but the wind chill to watch out for. Winds blowing down from the Arctic have nothing but some low hills and a few trees in their way. The cold that defines the prairies more than the flatness does. A couple of years ago one news service cheerfully reported that it was colder on the prairies than it was on Mars. Rockville, on Lake Manitou in Ontario was tropical in comparison.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kjbKJBTj8Y4/Vu3jo86p46I/AAAAAAACAZE/IcjwVS1UJO8bUntbkNi_whrL5g87s3WBA/s1600/saskatchewan2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kjbKJBTj8Y4/Vu3jo86p46I/AAAAAAACAZE/IcjwVS1UJO8bUntbkNi_whrL5g87s3WBA/s640/saskatchewan2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Eva Carson</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">And here is Eva in the summer, possibly still at Rockville although there are a few small lakes in the vicinity of Milestone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oA4OxQtxnSY/Vu3jpDIXRxI/AAAAAAACAZE/CmhVD7KiUh82HGeGl-Bg1Q6YvqiIb3v8Q/s1600/saskatchewan5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oA4OxQtxnSY/Vu3jpDIXRxI/AAAAAAACAZE/CmhVD7KiUh82HGeGl-Bg1Q6YvqiIb3v8Q/s640/saskatchewan5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Old Carson homestead. Roy Carson’s horses, C1921. </span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Whoever took this photo didn’t spend much time around horses. In his or her eye a foal was a cute baby animal, not an economic asset. Strange that we have sheep and cattle farmers but we say ‘horse breeders’ not horse farmers. Maybe it’s because that sounds like we are rearing them for knackery yards and glue pots when we like to think we have more noble plans for them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZoRg10ShV7U/Vu3jpVRAdnI/AAAAAAACAZE/HRyDm1cSFqgL9IKLCGJiIOykDX-RcKOsA/s1600/saskatchewan6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="378" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZoRg10ShV7U/Vu3jpVRAdnI/AAAAAAACAZE/HRyDm1cSFqgL9IKLCGJiIOykDX-RcKOsA/s640/saskatchewan6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Mortimer’s car, taken at Masson, Que, just opposite Cumberland, Ont. (Mortimer Cummings, oldest brother of Alberta). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The Ottawa River marks a border between Quebec and Ontario. Today Masson is part of Gatineau, a quick skip over the bridge from Ottawa. A hasty bit of research indicates an Alberta Cummings born in Ontario 1879, marrying a Thomas Pollock in 1899, and a Mortimer Cummings marrying Victoria Byham in 1896, though with the paywall in the way we can’t say they were related. There is always a small mystery as to who these captions are written for: the person putting the album together or others intending to look at it.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzUiv2P8crI/Vu3jpu_a0TI/AAAAAAACAZE/gcyR3aFXnyAk9XbPZCBzpwDPBo1B9GICQ/s1600/saskatchewan15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="446" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzUiv2P8crI/Vu3jpu_a0TI/AAAAAAACAZE/gcyR3aFXnyAk9XbPZCBzpwDPBo1B9GICQ/s640/saskatchewan15.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Fred Tendall at Milestone, Sask. Roy Carson worked for him circa 1915.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Back to Milestone, and to Fred Tendall. Roy Carson (obviously related to Eva) may be one of the people in the third photograph above. This photo was taken approximately twenty years later. Sometimes a journey returning to another’s past is a kind of pilgrimage of honour, and sometimes it’s because the person whose past it is recommends stopping by the old homestead. Despite what Hollywood wanted us to believe, no rancher dressed like this for work, unless the business ran a dude ranch on the side. Those curiosities of excess urbanisation had their heyday in the 1930s, when this photo was taken and when city folk would pay good money to get back to nature – or the closest thing to it.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bPB7i-m5atY/Vu3jqOnav5I/AAAAAAACAZE/rVcx8Pc9Fj4C591P-unTzshZUHNmgPqFQ/s1600/saskatchewan8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="394" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bPB7i-m5atY/Vu3jqOnav5I/AAAAAAACAZE/rVcx8Pc9Fj4C591P-unTzshZUHNmgPqFQ/s640/saskatchewan8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Mr and Mrs Tendall, Milestone Sask – Roy Carson worked for these people sometime between 13-1918.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Interesting the way Roy Carson is always referred to by his full name, suggesting the photographer does not know him (though Eva Carson is a friend). In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A History of the Marshall and Related Families</i>, written<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>by Wallace Marshall in 1922, we read That William Tindall, was a Nebraska farmer who had eight children, including Fred, who married Lilliam Brumsay and moved to Milestone. The thing in the bottom right is a dog.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EANiZAMv1Yg/Vu3jqXjiILI/AAAAAAACAZE/Z_-PqeLeg1skddRPQqWV0p7Pya5LwwsSw/s1600/saskatchewan7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EANiZAMv1Yg/Vu3jqXjiILI/AAAAAAACAZE/Z_-PqeLeg1skddRPQqWV0p7Pya5LwwsSw/s640/saskatchewan7.jpg" width="390" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Milestone Sask</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">It was odd to discover there are art historians and heritage researchers devoting their lives to the study of grain elevators. What could be more emblematic of the dullness that reputedly marks Canadian culture?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Head out to the flatlands, witness the proliferation of silos and you realize these are really what windmills are to the Dutch or what the gas station is to an Arizonan; the defining architecture. There is something else. We have this response wired in to our consciousnesses so that when we see a big structure built by other humans we instinctively gravitate towards it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V6HcecpGlGs/Vu3jq2vHy9I/AAAAAAACAZE/5XM6er3ptcADTiQ3ICQvc9V3oZMiSQMFQ/s1600/saskatchewan11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V6HcecpGlGs/Vu3jq2vHy9I/AAAAAAACAZE/5XM6er3ptcADTiQ3ICQvc9V3oZMiSQMFQ/s640/saskatchewan11.jpg" width="440" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Milestone Sask.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The setting of these photos reminds me of Jonathan Raban’s travelogue and historical investigation <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bad Land; an American Romance. </i>Set on the North Dakota and Montana prairies south of the border, the trigger for Raban’s inquiry are old photographs of homesteaders. The story they lead into (but don’t reveal) is an upturning of one of the great American myths.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3Gow_oHL7Q/Vu3jrKchtlI/AAAAAAACAZE/5nSZd6hzmSwa82kgJzErl5dU16CAph9AQ/s1600/saskatchewan12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3Gow_oHL7Q/Vu3jrKchtlI/AAAAAAACAZE/5nSZd6hzmSwa82kgJzErl5dU16CAph9AQ/s640/saskatchewan12.jpg" width="434" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Milestone Sask.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">That myth is that European man sets out to tame the land and does so, fearlessly and with determination. In Raban’s account things are a little less obvious. It isn’t the land but economics that defeat many of the farmers. A sodbuster can break the soil and plant a seed but there’s not much he can do when decisions made in Washingtoncauses the grain market to collapse.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4_1NOT0mapU/Vu3jrSajftI/AAAAAAACAZE/orRG2sdpImIIEm7zHJpN6Q8dqoQDnIO0g/s1600/saskatchewan16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4_1NOT0mapU/Vu3jrSajftI/AAAAAAACAZE/orRG2sdpImIIEm7zHJpN6Q8dqoQDnIO0g/s640/saskatchewan16.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Fred Tendall, friend of Roy Carson; the best cowpuncher in the west.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Like all good photo collections, these photos don’t tell a story so much as nod to one hidden in the empty spaces between images. In this case it is one that stretches over three decades and a thousand miles but centres, unwittingly perhaps, on Fred Tindall, rancher in one of the most quietly inhospitable places on earth. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE </span></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160316.01_p1/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BADLAND?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zGkGiHal-68/Vu3jkAreByE/AAAAAAACAZM/BJ8sJ3Lzvbk/s160-c-Ic42/BADLAND" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BADLAND?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">BAD LAND</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/03/bad-land.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-8633721703078982072Fri, 26 Feb 2016 01:57:00 +00002016-02-25T18:02:16.568-08:00actressesadvertisingBritainfashionHistory of photographyphotomontagereal photo postcardsRotary Photographic CotheatreWRITTEN IN THE STARS<b>Glamour, Text, Collecting and Rotary postcards</b><br /><b> <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1</style></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“The Press is perhaps a good deal to blame for the prominence of the “star” actor, and, even more damaging, the prominence of the “picture-postcard” actress who is the mainstay of the pernicious twaddle that passes for musical comedy.”</span></i><b><style></style></b> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Dublin Daily Express, August 31 1910</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tfjG-ZSh9uk/Vs-r7YWj-dI/AAAAAAACAR8/EzaxBQ4Emwo/s1600/rotary2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tfjG-ZSh9uk/Vs-r7YWj-dI/AAAAAAACAR8/EzaxBQ4Emwo/s640/rotary2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">If dates are your thing then the history of the Rotary Photographic Company is obscure, or even murky. Some very credible sources say the firm was established in 1899 while others, equally respectable, put it at 1901. Likewise some say its end came in 1921 but newspaper reports have it on record applying for bankruptcy in April 1916. Of course, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everybody</i> could be right, depending on the definition of ‘established’ (a company can change its name and its identity while the owners remain constant) and ‘folded’ (as in either ‘matters were in the hands of lawyers’ or ‘it actually died’). As for the owner, J. Menger, not only are his birth and death details unknown but his first name is often followed by a question mark. That said, the only interesting thing about the facts is that we don’t have them. All we really need to know about the Rotary Photographic Company is that between 1901 and World War 1 it led the pack among British postcard publishers when it came to design, and this at a time when nearly 200 million postcards were bought each year. Bankruptcy must have seemed like a distant and unlikely threat.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sd1dHSRkx4s/Vs-r74QZoPI/AAAAAAACAR8/fTBBuyJJdQU/s1600/rotary1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sd1dHSRkx4s/Vs-r74QZoPI/AAAAAAACAR8/fTBBuyJJdQU/s640/rotary1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Rotary was known for several themes (landscape not among them) but it based its reputation on real photographic postcards of actresses. An article in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leeds Mercury </i>in August 1903<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>has a spokesperson from the company talk about the demand for postcards of musclemen and “masculine musicians” though the “matinee girls” are what the customers really want. Millions were produced, and millions still gather dust in English flea markets. It’s understandable that people quickly weary of sorting through piles of images of the Dare sisters but scattered among the ordinary are postcards that display a vivid sense of graphic design, all the better for being photographs. Here in a play on a postcard of postcards, Phyllis Dare shows off some of the cards she appears on. Some decades later, post-modernists would take the idea of self-referentializing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tres</i> seriously but for Rotary’s designers it was just the standard grist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezoNRphfLWs/Vs-r8JErz8I/AAAAAAACAR8/g6vEXDmmCXs/s1600/rotary4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezoNRphfLWs/Vs-r8JErz8I/AAAAAAACAR8/g6vEXDmmCXs/s640/rotary4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">The lettering is faintly macabre, but worse than that it is inelegant. Anyone familiar with the work of French studios like Reutlinger would know something of the same idea was being worked across the Channel though with a more sophisticated sense of style. In Paris the stars of the theatre were sold as beautiful creatures too chic to share space with ordinary proles, but in England they were always of the people. The women in Reutlinger postcards rarely smiled while the English actresses always did, and not just smile but look positively delighted to be with the customer. Airs were things they put on in private.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YV7NsWKAYhQ/Vs-r9Vk6gII/AAAAAAACAR8/LGzc6fyFuE4/s1600/rotary8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YV7NsWKAYhQ/Vs-r9Vk6gII/AAAAAAACAR8/LGzc6fyFuE4/s640/rotary8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">These postcards were constructed exactly the way the Reutlinger cards were. The three portraits would have been taken at different sessions; in fact Rotary wouldn’t have cared who was in the image just so long as there was an existing photo of her. They might have used the lettering and background on dozens of cards differing only in the actresses appearing on them. The difference was that Reutlinger was a studio while Rotary was a publisher. Mr Menger may never have set foot in a darkroom.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c7gmo2oOpsQ/Vs-r96IrZPI/AAAAAAACAR8/SD_J_y1HyGc/s1600/rotary7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c7gmo2oOpsQ/Vs-r96IrZPI/AAAAAAACAR8/SD_J_y1HyGc/s640/rotary7.jpg" width="406" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“”Do introduce your little friends,” smiling upon the rather awkward group, as Camel said afterwards, “just like a postcard actress”.”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This rather awkward line is from an inexplicably forgotten story called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bride from Bloomsbury</i> by Anthony Upperton, published in the Dundee Courier on July 29 1925. It turned up after the age of the postcard actress; it, and she, had more or less passed into history by the end of WW1 but we get the idea. The postcard actress was a sweet and pretty creature though she was expected to have less personality than some six-legged inhabitants of the space behind the furniture.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ahcCsM_PIw/Vs-r-jM0zvI/AAAAAAACAR8/lrmNlJTgDP0/s1600/rotary12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4ahcCsM_PIw/Vs-r-jM0zvI/AAAAAAACAR8/lrmNlJTgDP0/s640/rotary12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In 1906 actress Florence Smithson took Rotary to court to prevent the company from publishing photos of her taken by A. E. Chandler of Exeter. The reasons why she didn’t want the photos used might have something to do with her not being paid any rights. We don’t know how the case turned out – the press quickly lost interest in following it – but if it was a rights issue then effectively she had none. Chandler may have paid her for the privilege of taking her portrait; that was common practice among the minor studios but once he had secured the images – prints and negatives – were his. When the Rapid Photo Company came up with the design for this card, it could have asked photographers like Chandler for any portraits. Only if Ms Smithson was appearing in a popular play would the company have snapped up her portrait. Even a major star like Sarah Bernhardt, at the bottom right, wasn’t likely to get a cent from this postcard even if it sold in the thousands. Behind these cheerful scenes lay some ruthless negotiating.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dgbXvn61KV0/Vs-r_I_RQJI/AAAAAAACASE/T0cRP49duX4/s1600/rotary5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dgbXvn61KV0/Vs-r_I_RQJI/AAAAAAACASE/T0cRP49duX4/s640/rotary5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Here’s a card from the rival Philco Company, interesting because it tells us as much about collecting as it does about how postcards were made. Like Rotary, Philco didn’t take any portraits but paid for existing ones. By setting the faces in a puzzle it was encouraging people to collect a whole set, here of the missing word series. Another card in the collection is identical to this save the message in the middle.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-E-UDXptI4/Vs-r_X3tDZI/AAAAAAACASE/EiBfaPoYkL0/s1600/rotary3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-E-UDXptI4/Vs-r_X3tDZI/AAAAAAACASE/EiBfaPoYkL0/s640/rotary3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">And here is a card copyrighted by Ralph Dunn, a photographer working out of 63 Barbican. Notice how the same portrait of Gertie Millar is used in the Philco card. It’s possible that Dunn took the original then sold rights to Philco but it is just as likely both bought rights from a third party. If that was the case, Dunn was making a claim on the idea of having Ms Millar jump out of a Christmas cracker.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IWkhpxjHKgI/Vs-r_yGOk2I/AAAAAAACASE/btQ1o66_eMw/s1600/rotary6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IWkhpxjHKgI/Vs-r_yGOk2I/AAAAAAACASE/btQ1o66_eMw/s640/rotary6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Here’s another of Dunn’s postcards. He liked the surreal effects of photo-montage. Despite his claims to copyright, Dunn has liberally borrowed from Reutlinger, especially in this image. We ought not feel too much outrage given Reutlinger took a liberal attitude to borrowing himself. Mr Dunn was also taken by the idea of actresses popping out of things; as no doubt were many like-minded elderly gents.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NnHRdEbmdI/Vs-sAQwT0tI/AAAAAAACASE/GQ-bxnssHEE/s1600/rotary10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NnHRdEbmdI/Vs-sAQwT0tI/AAAAAAACASE/GQ-bxnssHEE/s640/rotary10.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">If the messages on the backs of these cards are any guide, the most serious collectors of postcards were young women. In the Flossie card below one young lady asks another specifically how her collection is coming along. But back to Lucy. The moon, the stars, the beautiful actresses making up the name: we are in the land of dreamy dreams, a pre-Freudian world where all things and all thoughts need only be beautiful.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7G0dtekGt8M/Vs-sA2EyTUI/AAAAAAACASE/Mxts6JlIvHg/s1600/rotary9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7G0dtekGt8M/Vs-sA2EyTUI/AAAAAAACASE/Mxts6JlIvHg/s640/rotary9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The idea of cramming the typography with portraits of actresses may not have originated with Rotary but it became something of a signature. Two things are happening here. The first is that the viewer is quietly impressed with the trickery; it’s like watching a magic show knowing all along you’re being played with. The second is that the collectors inevitably try to identify the actresses, which is another way of saying they intellectually engage with the images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">No one is called Flossie anymore; even cats won’t answer to the name.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7dPydLn9oyg/Vs-sBKkxjbI/AAAAAAACASE/WSheR3tpr6I/s1600/rotary11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7dPydLn9oyg/Vs-sBKkxjbI/AAAAAAACASE/WSheR3tpr6I/s640/rotary11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Our final card is a tribute to an unaccredited designer’s eye and an example of why this era was destined to be brief. While the idea is not original there are dozens of individual photographic images sure to make some assistant’s week a nightmare while a recipient was bound to spend hours gazing at every detail. Excellent, on both counts, but at the same time we can see an aesthetic straddling the last dull edge of the Victorian age and the cleaner, sharper post-war modernism with some discomfort. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ROTARY"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><b>&nbsp;</b><br /><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160223.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ROTARY?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Oq6Gl_lFzv4/Vs-r7LEilaE/AAAAAAACAR4/ABsb7dIrhDU/s160-c-Ic42/ROTARY.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;">WRITTEN IN THE STARS</td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/02/written-in-stars.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-5316413487704810981Sat, 30 Jan 2016 00:50:00 +00002016-01-29T16:51:15.266-08:00advertisingBritainBulgariaCabinet Cards. Carte de VistesCanadaephemeraFranceHistory of photographyUSAON HINDSIGHT<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black;">Artistic cabinet card back stamps</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black;">“I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Andy Warhol</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-54BACfyUdb0/VqwGhhg-u0I/AAAAAAACAHc/y6xuRbLqFEM/s1600/gauthier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-54BACfyUdb0/VqwGhhg-u0I/AAAAAAACAHc/y6xuRbLqFEM/s640/gauthier.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">These days, when the word ‘art’ can mean pretty much what you want it to, some of us might feel nostalgic for the 19<sup>th</sup>century, when the word had a very precise definition. Or so we like to think. It turns out our great, great or merely great grandparents were just as vague on the subject. To them, ‘art’ didn’t necessarily carry a value judgment; it could refer to pictures in general, which is to say any pictures regardless of their quality. An artist was someone who made pictures. Of course they had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">artists</i> – people of questionable morals and hygiene who couldn’t keep a proper job – but if a sign painter called himself an artist no one was going to correct him. In Nashua, New Hampshire, Joseph Gauthier advertised himself as an art photographer and to emphasize his credentials had the landscape on the easel. The mountain could be Mt Adams or Washington in New Hampshire, but it could as easily be a generic mountain. You’ll notice the palette and the brush at the bottom of the canvas. The logic suggests the painting is being completed while we watch.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-scOfh6MrEBI/VqwGhxUO3yI/AAAAAAACAHg/iRn97uzXV7Q/s1600/spencelees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-scOfh6MrEBI/VqwGhxUO3yI/AAAAAAACAHg/iRn97uzXV7Q/s640/spencelees.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Thomas Donovan of Brighton and Boak and Sons of Malton and Driffield are just two other English studios that used this same back stamp. A glance at the bottom left shows it was produced by the printing firm Marion of Paris. The woman is supposed to be a figure from the Italian Renaissance but, given the period this was produced, we could also think of her as pre-Raphaelite. Note the ivy, a plant that has had numerous symbolic meanings throughout English history, some erotic and others more cerebral. What of the snake unwinding upon the vase? The first thought is that it is a nod to Genesis, but why?&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0v8mV7cqUkw/VqwGiAeR1HI/AAAAAAACAHk/RKMTDsTo5OI/s1600/curtis2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0v8mV7cqUkw/VqwGiAeR1HI/AAAAAAACAHk/RKMTDsTo5OI/s640/curtis2.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">There is little immediate information on the Curtis Art Gallery, most likely located in upstate New York, but we can imagine the kind of art that hung on its walls. Apart from views of Niagara Falls, we could expect a few mildly pictorialist scenes among the Currier &amp; Ives type prints and a few still lifes. The clue is in the Japanese fan sticking out of the vase in the bottom right. C1880s the inclusion of Japanese elements in any kind of pictorial design was a nod to art: not the high art the Renaissance as in the first backstamp but an indication that the producer had a rarified and sensitive outlook. This was an era when drinking Japanese tea out of small bowls was a mark of wealth and sophistication.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ftt0WnnRAXk/VqwGlgczydI/AAAAAAACAHw/God9TB9dWsA/s1600/maclardy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ftt0WnnRAXk/VqwGlgczydI/AAAAAAACAHw/God9TB9dWsA/s640/maclardy.jpg" width="420" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The acknowledgement to Japan is more explicit here in the umbrella. Again it is also a design by Marion, now of London as well as Paris. You’ll notice that, like Spence Lees and Curtis, J Maclardy offers services as a portrait painter. On the backs of CDVs sighted on Ebay, MacLardy says he or she also paints on ivory. That would be miniature ivory portraits. Although at this time (1880s) the idea of the artist as a member of the avant garde was being recognized, it would be churlish to argue that Maclardy was not an artist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9reKNgLt3fg/VqwGlyLBgTI/AAAAAAACAH4/wYcaZAHHtjQ/s1600/wpdrew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9reKNgLt3fg/VqwGlyLBgTI/AAAAAAACAH4/wYcaZAHHtjQ/s640/wpdrew.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">P. Drew is Alfred Palmer Drew. The <a href="https://cabinetcardgallery.wordpress.com/category/photographer-drew/">Cabinet Card Gallery</a> has some information on him, including the tragic destruction of his studio in 1896. For now we are only interested in the rather excellent back stamp. Although it doesn’t carry a printer’s name it is hard to believe that Drew would go to the expense of producing this on his own. An earlier post discussed the putti (as the cherubs are properly called) and their unclear symbolism. Here as usual there’s a suggestion they are up to mischief. Note how the one at the top is about to pull the sheet from the easel, so revealing the painting underneath, but the camera nearby indicates it will actually be a photograph. You’ll also notice that the little thug at the bottom has upset a frame and allowed a photo to fall out, so presumably advertising the fact that customers can have their portraits framed as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tFtURKHyE40/VqwGmLhicrI/AAAAAAACAIA/I6jFyI821xw/s1600/souvenir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tFtURKHyE40/VqwGmLhicrI/AAAAAAACAIA/I6jFyI821xw/s640/souvenir.jpg" width="412" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Two more putti, common enough on back stamps so we need not pay too much attention except that the one at the top wears an apron with the sun as a crest, telling us he or she an emissary from the sun or is the agent ultimately creating the photograph. The photo is from Bulgaria but the stamp was produced by Bernhard Vachs (?) of Vienna. There’s an evocation of Greek mythology here; of the putti caught up in a shroud discarded by Demeter, goddess of fertility, or even her daughter Persephone, associated with Spring.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P8kCrvlu0wA/VqwGmk-F6YI/AAAAAAACAII/PmE7ZHdJETU/s1600/smithsfalls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P8kCrvlu0wA/VqwGmk-F6YI/AAAAAAACAII/PmE7ZHdJETU/s640/smithsfalls.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">This elegant design also has allusions to Greece and also the Orient, but it is the two ships that catch our eye. Smith’s Falls is on the Rideau River but these ships are on a somewhat larger body of water, the closest to the town being Lake Ontario, which is some distance away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It’s proof if we want it that the back stamp need not bear any relation to the photographer’s business or philosophy. John Moore either consulted a catalogue or he found an ad in a photographic magazine, but when he saw this design he liked it at once.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jR4aDd874bI/VqwGm21qsxI/AAAAAAACAIM/uoHY9-IkFF0/s1600/darby1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jR4aDd874bI/VqwGm21qsxI/AAAAAAACAIM/uoHY9-IkFF0/s640/darby1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Finally, we come to Paul Darby, whose claim to fame, such as it is, was that he photographed James Joyce at his graduation in 1902. We don’t know whether Darby was Irish, French or British but we can see that by century’s turn he has embraced the design and typography of Art Nouveau; well who wouldn’t. to be an artistic photographer was as much about being wise to contemporary fashion as it was about being up with ideas in painting and sculpture. The idea of purity, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suffering</i> for art had caught on around Montmartre but over on the Boulevard de Strasbourg hunger and struggle were the last things anyone would admit to.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ONHINDSIGHT"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18.0pt;"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(&quot;https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20160113.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif&quot;) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ONHINDSIGHT?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iMQWxVV9tgw/VqwGhD14UhE/AAAAAAACAIQ/VC-4JPO_2_w/s160-c-Ic42/ONHINDSIGHT.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/ONHINDSIGHT?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">ON HINDSIGHT</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2016/01/on-hindsight.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-7545172493166969949Fri, 18 Dec 2015 03:32:00 +00002015-12-17T19:39:08.132-08:00costumeEnvironmentGermanyHistory of photographySnapshotsUSAA MINOR PLACE<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} span.apple-converted-space {mso-style-name:apple-converted-space;} span.onlytext {mso-style-name:onlytext;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Pages from an American photo album 1916-1920</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">“If I could do it, I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and excrement... a piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">James Agee</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0v0z8eLbu-w/VnN3bSS4QfI/AAAAAAACADs/XZWffIUVrZc/s1600/swivel1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="534" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0v0z8eLbu-w/VnN3bSS4QfI/AAAAAAACADs/XZWffIUVrZc/s640/swivel1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"></span><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">An album found in Ottawa, filled with more than sixty photographs taken in New York State and thereabouts between 1916 and 1920. Most of the images have captions and were carefully placed in pages that were then dated. This tells us it was put together some years after the fact. What that fact was becomes one of the album’s essential mysteries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lyhrWgEwVl8/VnN3fRE2OVI/AAAAAAACAD4/JWa5CYSy9o8/s1600/swivel12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="508" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lyhrWgEwVl8/VnN3fRE2OVI/AAAAAAACAD4/JWa5CYSy9o8/s640/swivel12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The photos are of the German community living around Utica in Oneida County C WW1. In the way that Swedish emigrants settled throughout the upper Midwest, Ukrainians the Canadian prairies and Basque sheepherders made Nevada their own, the great arrival of German emigrants that began in the 1850s became established predominantly in mill towns in the north-east. Unlike earlier waves of immigrants (nice phrase that; sort of like David Cameron’s ‘hordes of refugees’ but obviously better dressed), the Germans of the mid-19<sup>th</sup> century were motivated by economics and were not escaping religious persecution. The Anabaptists – Amish, Mennonite, Hutterite – who had arrived in the seventeenth century were exclusive and kept to themselves but where Germans settled in the 1850s they formed communities where it was common to see a Lutheran and a Catholic church close by each other. Several local histories suggest that back in Bavaria or the Rhineland, Protestants and Catholics kept a deliberate distance from each other but in towns like Utica the Catholic Germans were more likely to hang out with their Lutheran compatriots than their Irish brethren.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K6KYy5M6fVU/VnN3f6fSzBI/AAAAAAACAD8/Ym8YDqTyYJA/s1600/swivel3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="566" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K6KYy5M6fVU/VnN3f6fSzBI/AAAAAAACAD8/Ym8YDqTyYJA/s640/swivel3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Around the same time these photos were taken, over in Hustiford. Wisconsin, German had become established as the majority language, meaning that a generation after their parents arrived the children had no need to learn English. Even non-German residents saw the necessity in learning the German language. The people in these photos are also most likely first generation, defined as being born in the U.S though their parents weren’t. The terms ‘first’ and ‘second’ generation need clarifying since demographers appear to use both interchangeably. Whoever put the album together used English in the captions so considered him or herself a native English speaker but probably spoke German at home.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CcFlIXRSsvc/VnN3hF61spI/AAAAAAACAEM/9atk2-ua6sc/s1600/swivel15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="486" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CcFlIXRSsvc/VnN3hF61spI/AAAAAAACAEM/9atk2-ua6sc/s640/swivel15.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">They ate and drank German too. Prior to the generation from the 1850s becoming established, beer was not especially popular in the U.S. Within the decade the new arrivals set to put things right. Soon enough Pabst, Coors and Budweiser were unleashed upon the world, leaving non-Americans to shudder at the thought things had somehow improved. That generation of Germans also introduced bacon and ultimately the hot dog, pretty much guaranteeing that America will be bed-ridden by 2100CE and effectively deceased soon after.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WJ9m7LXL0Ec/VnN3iH3B9KI/AAAAAAACAEY/ZVG4qvZuTq8/s1600/swivel5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WJ9m7LXL0Ec/VnN3iH3B9KI/AAAAAAACAEY/ZVG4qvZuTq8/s640/swivel5.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A quick skim through the archives doesn’t throw up a Nellie Stiefvater in Utica but a Nellie Wilson born in California on September 17 1877 and dying in May 20 1959, did marry a Julius Stiefvater: all events taking place in the same state. We do find dozens of Stiefvaters in the cemetery records across Oneida County. Like Tremblay in Montreal, it appears that the surname has become so synonymous with place that others from different parts of New York might have assumed at once that a Stietvater came from Utica.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LbGGoMQLRXI/VnN3ik7z3EI/AAAAAAACAEc/0XCo_4ZEiX0/s1600/swivel11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="598" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LbGGoMQLRXI/VnN3ik7z3EI/AAAAAAACAEc/0XCo_4ZEiX0/s640/swivel11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #141823; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What about Henry Witte? On draft card Form 886 No.99 we have a Henry Witte, born January 29 1889 and resident at 526 Varick St, Utica. What are the chances this is the same? He fits the bill, but the Henry on the card describes himself as a conscientious objector “opposed to warfare”. This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>interesting. Who possessing the merest spark of an IQ isn’t opposed to war? Thousands of Americans tried to declare themselves conscientious objectors in WW1, especially after reading what was going on in France, but there were very few grounds for having the claim accepted without a trial, which was costly, undignified and guaranteed to end in some form of imprisonment. One was if you belonged to a handful of recognized religious groups like the Amish or the Mennonites, and both were originally Germanic. What if the Henry Witte in the public records argued, not unreasonably, that he was opposed to going to war against his ancestral homeland?&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H0AvRX0g3yg/VnN3jekdzeI/AAAAAAACAEs/a42S9YvrshQ/s1600/swivel13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="562" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H0AvRX0g3yg/VnN3jekdzeI/AAAAAAACAEs/a42S9YvrshQ/s640/swivel13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><span lang="EN-GB">The turnvereins were German community sporting clubs. When they began in Germany during the Napoleonic era they had a marked nationalistic aspect – the idea was to breed a generation of physically healthy German youths who would defend the Fatherland when required (hmm). By the time they were established in the U.S the politics had lost its sting. They were more about getting der jungen from one factory town to play der jungen from another while der mutters und der vaters drank beer, ate sausages and cheered like crazy.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jPCufye6wjw/VnN3jsV09hI/AAAAAAACAEw/_hUkzCEz5Z8/s1600/swivel16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="488" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jPCufye6wjw/VnN3jsV09hI/AAAAAAACAEw/_hUkzCEz5Z8/s640/swivel16.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The people in these photos are not just very normal looking; they are very normal looking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Americans</i>. The Henry Witte photo is the only one where the war gets a mention. That’s not surprising; it’s only a reminder that photo albums tell the truth but they don’t tell the story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It must have been hard for a Stiefvater to walk to school in 1916, let alone 1917 when the U.S entered the war.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ytjQkj8bJSY/VnN3ggnquAI/AAAAAAACAEE/o3FJrl6z00s/s1600/swivel4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ytjQkj8bJSY/VnN3ggnquAI/AAAAAAACAEE/o3FJrl6z00s/s640/swivel4.jpg" width="496" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span>But could we be looking for something that isn’t there? There’s that line that sooner or later every historian feels obliged to quote: ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are all manner of events and situations we don’t see in these photographs simply because they are not something that would have invited a photograph. That’s the problem with photo albums: they don’t show us the highs and lows so often as the grey spaces in between.</div><span lang="EN-GB"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vvEfGHNbkl4/VnN3j5MFowI/AAAAAAACAE4/NIDdwkelkv0/s1600/swivel8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="524" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vvEfGHNbkl4/VnN3j5MFowI/AAAAAAACAE4/NIDdwkelkv0/s640/swivel8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I do not think it is a Model T because if it was it should have grilles on the bonnet. There are several other candidates including the Detroiter, the Scripps-Booth Rocket, the Turnbull Runabout and even the Saxon Roadster, all of which sound like someone’s dream machine, but the more important question is who Wenzel is; apart from being the one with his hands on the steering wheel of course. What’s his relationship with the photographer? Have we met him before? What’s the point of a photo if it offers evidence then fails to explain what it is evidence of?&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XQJcKmnfruQ/VnN3kFMvRNI/AAAAAAACAE8/kqjtBst99i4/s1600/swivel7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XQJcKmnfruQ/VnN3kFMvRNI/AAAAAAACAE8/kqjtBst99i4/s640/swivel7.jpg" width="504" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">We’re lucky. It’s not that albums like this tell us what we don’t know but what we never thought much about. Prior to discovering this album, what might be called a history of the German Diaspora to the U.S was more accurately described as a statistic, so far as I was concerned anyway, and that’s being generous. It’s history from the side door: we should appreciate that. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE </span></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20151206.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/AMINORPLACE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s-V7-OCVhi8/VnN3aSq0rbE/AAAAAAACAFY/46vq46ZpfzU/s160-c-Ic42/AMINORPLACE.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/AMINORPLACE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">A MINOR PLACE</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-minor-place.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-160219729512667984Fri, 11 Dec 2015 01:26:00 +00002015-12-10T17:27:30.991-08:00Bamforth and Co.BritaindisasterEnvironmentHistory of photographylandscapesreal photo postcardsWorld War 2BEFORE THE FLOOD<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">The Holmfirth disaster of 1944</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">H. G. Wells</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9jvXxlePCdw/VmojbFEA99I/AAAAAAACACM/PIAXkhaDHeE/s1600/holmfirth1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9jvXxlePCdw/VmojbFEA99I/AAAAAAACACM/PIAXkhaDHeE/s640/holmfirth1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">During the last week of May 1944 an anticyclone developed over the south western Mediterranean, bringing cloudless skies and above average temperatures. Further north the system created an increase in humidity and storms developed over southern England. As the air currents were pushed northwards in a clockwise direction they brought with them a phenomenon known now as an atmospheric river, which expressed itself (for want of a better description) over the Holme Valley in Yorkshire. None of these events were especially unusual; the fog and drizzle that defines the English summer can be attributed to similar effects. In this case however the rains brought flash flooding to Yorkshire on Whit Monday, a public holiday. That was probably fortuitous. A lot of people would have travelled to nearby coastal resorts like Blackpool so missed the full impact. Three people were killed in the floods but the real damage was measured in the destruction of property, which was enormous.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xveKMIUNrgo/Vmojbj4S4bI/AAAAAAACACU/Cx9bMAd8GF8/s1600/holmfirth5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xveKMIUNrgo/Vmojbj4S4bI/AAAAAAACACU/Cx9bMAd8GF8/s640/holmfirth5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Holmfirth, a town on the edge of the Pennines better known today as the location for a quaint, rustic sitcom called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last of the Summer Wine</i>, received the brunt. These photographs were taken by Bray And Son, a photographic company set up in Holmfirth by Harry Bray after World War 1 and continued by his son, Trevor. They were published by the Bamforth Company. Neither Harry nor Trevor Bray considered themselves news photographers as such but realized they had to go out and document the destruction of the Whit Monday Floods, just as the Bamforth Company understood the importance of publishing them. Importantly however, the floods struck just a week before D-Day, when the British Government was heavily censoring all information concerning conditions inside Britain. Very little information on the floods was released at the time. These postcards would have been published months later, if not after the end of the war. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B-sZCGxp89A/VmojcLpG4QI/AAAAAAACACY/O3pGsgKEVEU/s1600/holmfirth4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B-sZCGxp89A/VmojcLpG4QI/AAAAAAACACY/O3pGsgKEVEU/s640/holmfirth4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">What they tell us about then is not so important as what they say about today. This week storms struck the same area, and wider parts of central and northern Britain. So far another three people have also lost their lives and the damage is estimated in the hundreds of millions of pounds. The real difference is that when these floods struck in 1944 they were half expected as a once in a century event. Storm Desmond as the present catastrophe is called, should be understood as part of what has now become an annual cycle. But although it was seen on the horizon, so to speak, nothing much was done about that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4oyZEFxiZk/Vmojdl2fVmI/AAAAAAACACk/xFMkJ4v7jPs/s1600/holmfirth3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y4oyZEFxiZk/Vmojdl2fVmI/AAAAAAACACk/xFMkJ4v7jPs/s640/holmfirth3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Despite the Government apparently being caught by surprise, events have unfolded along a predictable course. Firstly, defences against flooding prove inadequate. Reports emerge that standard procedures can’t be enacted because government funding to the responsible departments has been slashed. TV cameras zoom in on the faces of people who have lost everything. The army steps in. A Captain or Colonel tells reporters he can’t believe basic, sensible steps weren’t taken. In a few weeks official reports will, yet again, outline a woeful response by a careless administration. Next year the process will begin again. In 1944 the Government could present a case as to why it was not prepared for the Holme Valley floods, this being a time of war and an era when available technology could at best only suggest something might happen. Seventy one years later all such excuses are indefensible.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B3xd1u8xA6Q/VmojeCXbhFI/AAAAAAACACo/azXHOEf4Lm4/s1600/holmfirth2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B3xd1u8xA6Q/VmojeCXbhFI/AAAAAAACACo/azXHOEf4Lm4/s640/holmfirth2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">These photographs aren’t just a reminder from the past of Britain’s future today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>During the war the chimes of Big Ben everyone heard on the BBC were recordings played to prevent the Germans from interpreting weather conditions: the more humid the atmosphere the more muffled the sound would have been. This was the level of sophistication the weather bureau was able to exercise. Today meteorologists can not only see atmospheric rivers developing, they can also reasonably predict how much water will be dumped and where. This raises the obvious question of why the British Government is always unprepared for weather disasters. Consistent failings defy common sense. Not to push the conspiracy argument too far, but you could be forgiven for thinking someone sees some kind of advantage in scenes like these.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BEFORETHEFLOOD"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20151206.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BEFORETHEFLOOD?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YHBdIs5j0uo/VmojarNVuaE/AAAAAAACACs/LIzlbDNyZ9w/s160-c-Ic42/BEFORETHEFLOOD.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BEFORETHEFLOOD?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">BEFORE THE FLOOD</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/12/before-flood.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-5729234705243870137Sat, 05 Dec 2015 00:48:00 +00002015-12-04T16:48:54.955-08:00BlackpoolBritainhand-colouringHistory of photographynightreal photo postcardsseasideValentine & CoBLACKPOOL ROCK<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Postcards of the Blackpool Illuminations</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">John Lennon</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bGSAvApESBw/VmIxKN2kiSI/AAAAAAAB__0/o3AL-aON39c/s1600/valentinebpool1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bGSAvApESBw/VmIxKN2kiSI/AAAAAAAB__0/o3AL-aON39c/s640/valentinebpool1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In November 1879 Thomas Edison applied for a patent for an incandescent light bulb, and as every American school student will tell you, the light globe was born. However, a couple of months before Edison made his application, Blackpool had its first festival of illuminations and coloured lights were strung up along the promenade. The English may remind you that Joseph Swan beat Edison by a year. Edison is famous for inventing things some time after someone else did but this is beside the point. Even if Swan’s incandescent globe wasn’t quite practical in 1879, electric lighting existed in various forms and, like the automobile, it was understood that it was only a matter of time before it became practical for every house to have electric lamps. This was reason enough to have a festival.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Alzux3YR84A/VmIxKvszKdI/AAAAAAAB__4/v9FP10ZmxPQ/s1600/valentinebpool7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Alzux3YR84A/VmIxKvszKdI/AAAAAAAB__4/v9FP10ZmxPQ/s640/valentinebpool7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">During the years before the Second World War Blackpool’s illuminations had become internationally famous. Electric lighting was now commonplace in most cities around the world but the illuminations were a celebration of something more ancient and sacred. Held from mid-September to mid-November, they were a final protest against the steadily shortening days; a rebellion against nature, which, some philosophers argued, was what the modern world was all about. Having subjugated electricity we could defeat the powers of darkness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bS52tqplFmo/VmIxLkBHPSI/AAAAAAACAAE/zoG6Pi_ping/s1600/valentinebpool5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bS52tqplFmo/VmIxLkBHPSI/AAAAAAACAAE/zoG6Pi_ping/s640/valentinebpool5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">As the images here attest (Actually they do something else but we’ll get to that.), Blackpool’s waterfront was transformed into a psychedelic fantasyland of giant butterflies, gondolas, stagecoaches, fish, devils and flowery biplanes. It all looks very wonderful, which is where the problems arise.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4gEcU47vnig/VmIxL9iPwjI/AAAAAAACAAM/IDjAOM_UIjs/s1600/valentinebpool3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4gEcU47vnig/VmIxL9iPwjI/AAAAAAACAAM/IDjAOM_UIjs/s640/valentinebpool3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Every year the Valentine’s Company sent out a photographer, probably local to Blackpool, to photograph the lights so the results could be turned into postcards. The initial results would have been drab. The images were in black and white and the discrepancies between light and shadow were so extreme that some areas were either horribly over or under exposed. Even when standing under bright lighting shutter speeds needed to be slow. Obviously, straight photographic representations were out. Fortunately, the Valentine’s Company had never placed much value on straight photography.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aub-Eem7VwU/VmIxMRNmS9I/AAAAAAACAAY/j_TwkszLFNQ/s1600/valblack2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aub-Eem7VwU/VmIxMRNmS9I/AAAAAAACAAY/j_TwkszLFNQ/s640/valblack2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Even before real photo postcards emerged in the 1900s, James Valentine’s company had treated the negative as a mere starting point in the process of creating a final image. Beginning and end did not need anything more in common. That attitude was the norm. Very few commercial photographers in 1905 would have argued there was something sacred about a negative.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UrkRwSjEAgI/VmIxMkJgPxI/AAAAAAACAAc/0g5ir71PTtQ/s1600/valblack3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UrkRwSjEAgI/VmIxMkJgPxI/AAAAAAACAAc/0g5ir71PTtQ/s640/valblack3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Still, it needed to be the foundation of the image. For the postcards from the Blackpool Illuminations, the predominant features in the scene had to be intact, so here the photographer snapped a gondola and sailboat in the pool in front of the bath house, with Chinese lanterns strung across the water and the fairground in the distance. The people in the foreground were also there, the one to the left just entering the scene. That however was the extent to any veracity. Taking the people as the starting point, they may have been within a brightly illuminated area but only very slow film of around 800 ASA and higher would have had the capacity to freeze them in motion. What if however, the photograph was taken at dusk, just after the lights came on but before the sun set? The people in the retouching studio would have had no trouble creating the impression of night.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zRuIQdmpSfE/VmIxMwjFhoI/AAAAAAACAAk/bMnb6jOL9Gs/s1600/valblack1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zRuIQdmpSfE/VmIxMwjFhoI/AAAAAAACAAk/bMnb6jOL9Gs/s640/valblack1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">It is no coincidence that where it appears in each of these photos the moon is full and approximately the same size as it emerges from the clouds. It is apparent that it is artificial, a detail Valentine’s wouldn’t have tried to hide. It is that moon against a dark sky that tells us this is nighttime. Everything else could be photographed at dusk and then enhanced with colour.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z1LRn-PO9Ro/VmIxNA5btkI/AAAAAAACAAs/jIhHuSnx__M/s1600/valblack4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z1LRn-PO9Ro/VmIxNA5btkI/AAAAAAACAAs/jIhHuSnx__M/s640/valblack4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The decision to use hand-colouring probably wasn’t difficult to make but it was what distinguished the images. Blackpool became lurid and almost grotesque. Of course, the intention was not to strive for authenticity but aspire to the impression created by the illuminations. Pastels were out of the question. The colours had to be vivid, even though it meant that some scenes, like this one, have a sinister quality.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRgGxa_SAmU/VmIxNs9Ly1I/AAAAAAACAA4/91Pe0mziY54/s1600/valentinebpool2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pRgGxa_SAmU/VmIxNs9Ly1I/AAAAAAACAA4/91Pe0mziY54/s640/valentinebpool2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB">During World War 1 many British women found themselves working in factories doing incredibly detailed work such as painting in badges and royal seals on military equipment. When the war ended, the factories (on behalf of the government) sacked them. Meanwhile, tobacco companies, postcard publishers etc suddenly needed people who knew how to work in miniature. Much as the boss might want to employ his nephew, young Roger, with his medals, his one arm and his ruined lungs, Roger’s wife, Bessie, who had spent the last four years painting numbers on shell casings was both more able and better qualified. She was re-employed, though rarely on terms that suggested there was something dignified about her labour. Her wages barely paid for Roger’s Player’s Navy Cut and aspirin. Along with rubbish wages, she put up with standing in a line along with dozens of other wives of war veterans, monotonously applying specks of colour to postcards like this, all the time inhaling toxins that would have put an elephant to sleep. Bessie’s work was every bit as dirty, as monotonous and as dangerous as Roger’s had been. But I digress. What’s also worth thinking about is that despite the production line, hand colouring made each of these images unique. We can see some slippage in this postcard, especially along the strings of lights. Despite thousands of the same postcard being printed, that mistake made this like no other.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9-eHgyZWKrw/VmIxN2bysJI/AAAAAAACAA8/nk_Gwr9CWAM/s1600/valentinebpool8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9-eHgyZWKrw/VmIxN2bysJI/AAAAAAACAA8/nk_Gwr9CWAM/s640/valentinebpool8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">This postcard was most likely not published by Valentine’s. The suspicion is that the original negative was under-exposed, which wasn’t an impediment. When the outlines were enhanced a strange scene with this crowd of shadowy figures was created. Once the living of Blackpool retire indoors, the dead arise to wander about in a state of dulled curiosity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BCICC9kdglc/VmIxOEJ41dI/AAAAAAACABE/KQ3E0gs5d5Y/s1600/valentinebpool9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BCICC9kdglc/VmIxOEJ41dI/AAAAAAACABE/KQ3E0gs5d5Y/s640/valentinebpool9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">When these photos were taken electricity was still a hallmark of progress, which could be boasted from the crest of the street car. We can’t be absolutely certain when these postcards were produced but we can wonder who though electricity was still a sign of progress after WW2 with its rocket attacks and atom bombs. In any case, once again we get a spectral atmosphere from the brightly lit but empty interior of the car. Who said ghosts have to be monochrome?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJTMuKGVazI/VmIxOskSxzI/AAAAAAACABI/ILiUt-A3TLw/s1600/valentinebpool11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJTMuKGVazI/VmIxOskSxzI/AAAAAAACABI/ILiUt-A3TLw/s640/valentinebpool11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We understand the image of Blackpool being created by these images, yet in this final scene the impression is almost the opposite. Brightly lit, yes, but also eerily deserted and joyless. In the bottom right a figure hurries from a taxi towards a café, which also looks empty. Blackpool is like a town in a Robert Aickman story, where everything looks in place except that one, nagging absence, which in this case turns about to be any other sign of life.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BLACKPOOLROCK"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20151130.00_p1/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BLACKPOOLROCK?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-BU-P0nNs1Zo/VmIxJkAZIxE/AAAAAAACABM/sXkKLRKodFw/s160-c-Ic42/BLACKPOOLROCK.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/BLACKPOOLROCK?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">BLACKPOOL ROCK</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/12/blackpool-rock.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-7805740261390913321Fri, 27 Nov 2015 05:19:00 +00002015-11-26T21:19:28.389-08:00animalsEnvironmentHistory of photographylandscapesSnapshotsUSAVACATION<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Ten snapshots from Niagara, New York and Yellowstone, 1935</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">“Just sit back and let Mother Nature carry us toward her own.”</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Yogi Bear</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Yogi Berra</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uHQbOxRyOVQ/VlflTqcok8I/AAAAAAAB_9o/m86J2ZcwyxA/s1600/niagara1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uHQbOxRyOVQ/VlflTqcok8I/AAAAAAAB_9o/m86J2ZcwyxA/s640/niagara1.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In 1935 a family travelled from Canada to Yellowstone National Park, taking in Niagara Falls and New York along the way. They stopped at other sites, and may have gone further than Yellowstone (a photo not included is from Colorado), but these are the places in the photos that we have. Because these were bought in Montreal and because the inscriptions on the back are in French, we can reasonably assume the family came from Montreal or thereabouts. A pedant may clear his throat and beg to speak here but actually, we don’t care where they came from, only where they went.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sSmyzFrkk6o/VlflUM_kwsI/AAAAAAAB_9w/GWyKC-YBmLs/s1600/niagara2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="374" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sSmyzFrkk6o/VlflUM_kwsI/AAAAAAAB_9w/GWyKC-YBmLs/s640/niagara2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The unifying idea behind all the photos in the collection is that they are about bigness. Niagara Falls is massive, New York is huge and Yellowstone is vast, but that’s not surprising. In 1935 America was still a big country, metaphorically if not so physically. Niagara Falls is only the ninth largest cataract in the world – waterfalls being measured by the volume of water that pours over per time frame, not the height nor the width.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GmQKgP71hLM/VlflURGzbWI/AAAAAAAB_90/QJjhRC2va-M/s1600/newyork2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GmQKgP71hLM/VlflURGzbWI/AAAAAAAB_90/QJjhRC2va-M/s640/newyork2.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The Empire State from ground level. How many of us have visited New York, stood at the bottom of the Empire State and jiggled around, finding that perfect position from where the sides of the building angle in as they move up to a vanishing point? If you haven’t tried it you haven’t been a tourist in New York.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IpQhmRG-ZVQ/VlflWLG-tpI/AAAAAAAB_-A/sTxUXnBxVNk/s1600/newyork1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IpQhmRG-ZVQ/VlflWLG-tpI/AAAAAAAB_-A/sTxUXnBxVNk/s640/newyork1.jpg" width="380" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">New York was big; no one would argue with that, and whether it was the biggest city in the world was a matter of population or square miles, which again wasn’t so important. When this photo was taken from the Empire State Building, that , and the Chrysler, seen in the middle ground here, were only four years old and both were the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Interesting: whoever wrote the inscription on the back says this is Chicago, which it obviously isn’t. But what that tells us is that by the end our photographer was so overwhelmed by the experience he or she could no longer remember where the photos were taken. A common experience; usually indicating a good time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l8ouFUF6cnM/VlflWmFX_NI/AAAAAAAB_-M/ZYowv6t3DTg/s1600/wyoming1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l8ouFUF6cnM/VlflWmFX_NI/AAAAAAAB_-M/ZYowv6t3DTg/s640/wyoming1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">We have skipped large parts of America and find ourselves with the family at the top of a summit in Wyoming. Which mountain our photographer doesn’t say but obviously one that was accessible to children. If the children were exceptionally well educated they could read the detritus around them for evidence of the last ice age that affected this particular mountain.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RjCiIGiJWAo/VlflW1J2-sI/AAAAAAAB_-U/HOeb3q9SkC4/s1600/yellowstone1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="364" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RjCiIGiJWAo/VlflW1J2-sI/AAAAAAAB_-U/HOeb3q9SkC4/s640/yellowstone1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">And now we are in Yellowstone. You may have seen footage of what happened to Yellowstone within a few years of the reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s. This photo gives you an idea of why they needed to be brought back. Before Yellowstone became a national park the vegetation had covered the slopes much more thickly. This prevented erosion, which in itself allowed more biodiversity. By 1935 there were no wolves in Yellowstone, the last being killed nine years earlier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HnTFQ-uzf9I/VlflXPhpHGI/AAAAAAAB_-s/1SOpc9mmoc0/s1600/yellowstone2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HnTFQ-uzf9I/VlflXPhpHGI/AAAAAAAB_-s/1SOpc9mmoc0/s640/yellowstone2.jpg" width="386" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The paradox of America’s internationally progressive national parks programme was that it wreaked destruction on wilderness areas, usually under the directorship of men who aspired to protect the landscape. The question of how to balance conservation of the environment against the commercial demand to make it available to visitors was impossible to answer given the knowledge and general ethos of 1930s. It wouldn’t get a proper response until Aldo Leopard wrote his report on wildlife management in 1963. In 1935 these falls would have been viewed from a specially constructed platform, with the photographer crowded by others trying to take the same photo. Experiencing Yellowstone wasn’t much different to viewing a patient in an incubator. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t0drlUCEfZo/VlflXQPOT3I/AAAAAAAB_-c/tFYGrT2GDUg/s1600/yellowstone3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t0drlUCEfZo/VlflXQPOT3I/AAAAAAAB_-c/tFYGrT2GDUg/s640/yellowstone3.jpg" width="386" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Her hat isn’t fashion. It is part of a uniform. She is unlikely to be a tour guide because the rest of her outfit isn’t suitable. By 1935 the New Deal was in full swing and the Civilian Conservation Corps employed thousands of workers to maintain the national parks, but the CCC only employed men. She isn’t part of that. She could have a trolley off camera and be selling ice creams or sodas from it. In any case, this is exactly the type of platform tourists would have observed the park from.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RXxOH-2WwEw/VlflXwfcp6I/AAAAAAAB_-g/YTRClsW2bU4/s1600/yellowstone4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RXxOH-2WwEw/VlflXwfcp6I/AAAAAAAB_-g/YTRClsW2bU4/s640/yellowstone4.jpg" width="386" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Old Faithful blows its stack every 35 or 120 minutes. There is a theory, part paranoid conspiracy, part science based paranoia, that the volcanic caldera, the same force that drives Old Faithful will collapse any day and being of such a size it will drag most of the U.S with it. Maybe President Trump’s last thought will be that all his billions of dollars are now worth nothing. Fortunately Canada and Mexico don’t appear to be affected so we can relax.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1LEQ18AG95k/VlflYU_-0dI/AAAAAAAB_-o/mgs4ThZ0SzE/s1600/yellowstone6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1LEQ18AG95k/VlflYU_-0dI/AAAAAAAB_-o/mgs4ThZ0SzE/s640/yellowstone6.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Imagine travelling all the way to Yellowstone and not seeing a bear. Well, if you were Canadian you might have thought that was no big deal. Even so, Yellowstone didn’t have any wolves left but the bears had become emblematic, not just of the park but of wilderness. They were an apex predator and in the 1930s they were the animals that stood up to represent all others. Anyway, here is a photo of Wild America 1935; a black bear so inured to people that it knows how to perform for the camera. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We leave our holidaymakers here. They’ve shown us a fragment of America, from back when it was brash and self-confident and too obsessed with grand visions and great projects to be aware there was a concept called hubris. Still, there are glimmers in the darkness. Yellowstone is one. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/YELLOWSTONE"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20151117.00_p3/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/YELLOWSTONE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-EewMfbdeu2M/VlflS2rbbQE/AAAAAAAB_-w/fd1yXEt41DY/s160-c-Ic42/YELLOWSTONE.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/YELLOWSTONE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">YELLOWSTONE</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/11/vacation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-3207170068862356824Fri, 13 Nov 2015 22:55:00 +00002015-11-13T14:55:35.467-08:00architectureAustraliaBritainCabinet Cards. Carte de VistesCanadacartes de visiteConstantinopleCosta RicaephemeraFranceHistory of photographyMelbourneParisTurkeyTHE BACK COUNTRY<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Back stamps and design on cartes de visite and cabinet cards.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Walt Disney</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oDaMD382-zA/VkZmsgYhLuI/AAAAAAAB_7Q/ftnwOM7tArc/s1600/phebus095.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oDaMD382-zA/VkZmsgYhLuI/AAAAAAAB_7Q/ftnwOM7tArc/s640/phebus095.jpg" width="436" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">For some people, the pleasure in collecting cartes de visite and cabinet cards lies entirely on the reverse, in the stamps that identify the studio and sometimes advertise the range of services. This is understandable. The images on the other side are often commonplace and uninteresting while the back carries an intricate design that can also be a code. This stamp on the back of a cabinet card from the Phebus studio in Constantinople is dominated by Apollo, the god of the sun and of light – AKA Phoebus Apollo - an obvious choice for a photographic studio. Apollo could also be a god of truth, which again makes sense for a photographic studio, since that was what they purported to offer. Note the idealized Ottoman script at the top and the French <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Photographie</i>. Without knowing who runs the studio we can tell from the French that he was Armenian, because French was the lingua franca of the Armenia business community in Constantinople. Sure enough, Phebus was run by </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Boğos Tarkulyan, one of the better known photographers in town around the turn of last century. The Art Nouveau pattern was a deliberate nod to contemporary ideas in Western Europe, identifying Tarkulyan as someone less, or even not, interested in Ottoman traditions. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The choice of flower in the frames at the top would have been conscious too. It may be amaryllis, which has some connection with Apollo, but that’s only a guess.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rfT5ymV4nwA/VkZmtHgLwoI/AAAAAAAB_7Y/wB_t_7wbkEE/s1600/gastonguay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rfT5ymV4nwA/VkZmtHgLwoI/AAAAAAAB_7Y/wB_t_7wbkEE/s640/gastonguay.jpg" width="380" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The study of the backs of CDVs and cabinet cards is a branch of iconography, specifically one that can trace its origins back to the frontispieces found in books from the sixteenth century through to the beginning of the nineteenth. The frontispiece could be a declaration of intent or an acknowledgement of a patron’s greatness but were never just random images. It was intended to be read in minute detail and required knowledge of biblical imagery as well as more demotic symbols. By the 1860s, when this carte was produced, the art and meaning of frontispieces had fallen out of use but Theophile Gastonguay evoked them with the image of a beaver. Although the beaver did not become the official emblem of Canada until 1975, it had been commonly used as a symbol of Canada since the seventeenth century.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JsS01ZI80wY/VkZmtXKGVvI/AAAAAAAB_7g/VsnG6LnXqn0/s1600/mcdonald2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JsS01ZI80wY/VkZmtXKGVvI/AAAAAAAB_7g/VsnG6LnXqn0/s640/mcdonald2.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Archibald McDonald ran a photography studio in Melbourne throughout the gold rush. Like every other studio photographer in Melbourne at this time he came from another country, from Nova Scotia in fact, just a spit away (in Canadian distances) from Theophile Gastonguay. You might wonder why St George and not a kangaroo but there we see the difference a century and a half of colonization can make. Although by the 1860s people around the world recognized the kangaroo as Australian, it wasn’t a national symbol. Australia (AKA “The Colonies”) didn’t have such a thing, or if it did it was likely to be St George’s dragon, which, like Australia, was proudly British. Archibald McDonald: logic tells us he was of Scottish background and he might have been the type to give a Glasgow kiss to anyone who called him British, but St George here doesn’t stand for England so much as a landmark in Melbourne. Long gone now, once upon a time everyone in Melbourne knew where St George’s Hall was.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a8x19isrHG4/VkZmtrhzdPI/AAAAAAAB_7o/0UDzbp1txDQ/s1600/louis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a8x19isrHG4/VkZmtrhzdPI/AAAAAAAB_7o/0UDzbp1txDQ/s640/louis.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">A similar thinking may have been behind Louis of Paris’s depiction of the Porte St Martin, which then as today was close by the central shopping district. Firstly it told customers the studio was located in one of the more salubrious areas, and then it told them how to get there. Notice it was opposite the Theatre de l’Ambigu, a place made famous by Louis Daguerre’s set designs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o7TNXeaNKBM/VkZmt15W7mI/AAAAAAAB_7w/_Fx8ME8xR3g/s1600/beaumarchais.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o7TNXeaNKBM/VkZmt15W7mI/AAAAAAAB_7w/_Fx8ME8xR3g/s640/beaumarchais.jpg" width="376" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Migevant’s studio may not have been at such a desirable address as Louis’ but no Parisian had to ask where the Place de la Bastille was. When this CDV was produced in the early 1870s there couldn’t have been too many people around who remembered the Revolution and the storming of the Bastille in 1789 but enough would have recalled the glorious revolution of 1830, which the July Monument seen here honoured. Essentially the French replaced one monarch with another, which is a little like stumbling from one failed relationship with a drunken philanderer straight into another. Today the Boulevarde Beaumarchais is lined with shops selling antique cameras.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3fSTZvuYoAE/VkZmuVdAisI/AAAAAAAB_74/7FS9hk2VPFI/s1600/mayman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3fSTZvuYoAE/VkZmuVdAisI/AAAAAAAB_74/7FS9hk2VPFI/s640/mayman.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The back stamp can be evidence. In 1876 Alfred Mayman took over the Temple Photographic Gallery at 170 Fleet St in London. Two years later the City of London dismantled the Temple Bar on account of Fleet Street needing widening and the structure was dilapidated. The sections were carefully stored and in 1880 Henry Meux bought it and reassembled it on his estate in Hertfordshire. In 1984 it was bought back from Meux’s descendants and re-erected in Paternoster Square. All this to say that there was only a two year period between 1876 and 1878 when there was any practical purpose for Mayman to have an illustration of the structure on the back of his CDVs. We don’t need any other information to date the image.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lPSTwWQaqYI/VkZmu-IjdxI/AAAAAAAB_8E/ACfPBrAQK0I/s1600/monge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lPSTwWQaqYI/VkZmu-IjdxI/AAAAAAAB_8E/ACfPBrAQK0I/s640/monge.jpg" width="376" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Images of cherubs with cameras are common, as is the inclusion of an artist’s palette, but what does it mean? Strictly speaking, these round and flabby infant creatures are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Putti</i>: cherubs have several heads and bits of eagle and lion attached to them. The precise symbolic meaning of the Putti is not understood but since the late Renaissance they have had an association with the arts, and music in particular. Originally the true artist had his muse, a goddess, who inspired him and for whom he created. The little toddlers might have been intended to suggest the playfulness every serious artist needs but also, babies were the inevitable result of creative coupling. In the way that a red and blue barber’s poles once indicated a place to have a bit of bloodletting and these days means a haircut, Monge, and every other photographer who used the imagery saw it as an icon not a symbol.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ijgYfgm36Ds/VkZmvHLLpUI/AAAAAAAB_8I/HfL2cuaW-4Q/s1600/sabliere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ijgYfgm36Ds/VkZmvHLLpUI/AAAAAAAB_8I/HfL2cuaW-4Q/s640/sabliere.jpg" width="384" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Just to reinforce the point (somewhat), we find exactly the same image on the reverse of a CDV by a studio located on Rue de la Sabliere. The companies that printed the blanks for CDVs usually have their name in small letters down the bottom. We don’t get any such on either Monge or the Sabliere studio card and while we could assume the same company produced the blanks, it is also possible that several bought their designs from another source. Somebody could have produced this image of the putto, sold it on to the printers who then customized it for the various studios who used them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_eIJzCyMLUg/VkZmvXp9BVI/AAAAAAAB_8Q/tOst9Ih0stA/s1600/benoit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_eIJzCyMLUg/VkZmvXp9BVI/AAAAAAAB_8Q/tOst9Ih0stA/s640/benoit.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">This palette is also very common, with a fairly obvious interpretation although it ought to be pointed out that few commercial photographers thought of themselves as artists in the way that people used that word even in the relatively staid 1860s. ‘Artist’ was a kind of password for quality of technique rather than ideas. Apart from being a photographer, Camille Benoit was an art dealer, so he may have seen the image as a pun.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RBlEFzfw1Kk/VkZmvkxEZII/AAAAAAAB_8U/FGipMbcd0aU/s1600/rudd2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RBlEFzfw1Kk/VkZmvkxEZII/AAAAAAAB_8U/FGipMbcd0aU/s640/rudd2.jpg" width="412" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Harrison Nathaniel Rudd ran his studio in Costa Rica around the turn of last century, as board mounted photographs were giving way to postcards. Costa Rica was relatively prosperous and peaceful at this time, meaning an American could operate a studio with some confidence it would not be closed down or he would have to get out at short notice. This rather elegant design may have also come from a template customized to his requirements. Or not. There is a pun here as well, in the idea of the woman’s hand holding out a carte or cabinet card. A camera is depicted at the top of the crest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Maybe Rudd also had cartes with the same back design that the hand holds out.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEBACKCOUNTRY"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20151110.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEBACKCOUNTRY?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3ryr-ev_Lls/VkZmsKrRPXE/AAAAAAAB_8Y/C5EU8SSS24A/s160-c-Ic42/THEBACKCOUNTRY.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEBACKCOUNTRY?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">THE BACK COUNTRY</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-back-country.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-1116137851651214753Sat, 07 Nov 2015 00:05:00 +00002015-11-06T16:06:36.720-08:00architectureChicagoCitiesHistory of photographyminiature viewsreal photo postcardssnaphotsUSAWINDY<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Snapshots of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></i><span lang="EN-GB">Rudyard Kipling</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lo7EDyc80xc/Vj09VNEIoJI/AAAAAAAB_5k/oCVxKfCVNEs/s1600/chicago6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lo7EDyc80xc/Vj09VNEIoJI/AAAAAAAB_5k/oCVxKfCVNEs/s640/chicago6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">People will tell you New York used to be the world’s biggest city, the richest or most beautiful, but also the most violent and depraved. It was the cultural capital of the world or its actual beating heart, and so on. One or two of these may have come close to the truth at some point. Chicago never attracted that level of hyperbole but what we were told about it made it more glamorous, in a tough, seedy way: the meatpacking district, the black sox scandal, Al Capone and the outfit, Memphis Minnie and Muddy Waters. If New York was an overdressed hooker preening under Neon lights, Chicago was the snivelling little pimp standing back in the shadows.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-35cTm-eyQjY/Vj09awCQlpI/AAAAAAAB_5w/YJgunKUYvWI/s1600/chicago3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="434" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-35cTm-eyQjY/Vj09awCQlpI/AAAAAAAB_5w/YJgunKUYvWI/s640/chicago3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Not that you’ll see that in this collection, centred essentially on this and the next two, being snapshots taken by the same person in 1943. This one in particular is rather special in that we get two military men framing a view down the sidewalk on Michigan Ave, the Stars and Stripes above them creating a triangle while on the right we get a line of Cadillacs under the Pabst beer sign. Pabst is horrid: you wouldn’t feed it to a dog, but the company did build one of the few advertisements deserving praise as an architectural icon. Note the time on the sign: it looks like 7 to 12.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eRwr5Emf8u8/Vj09bPiKDgI/AAAAAAAB_54/vyxEVF34BJ0/s1600/chicago1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eRwr5Emf8u8/Vj09bPiKDgI/AAAAAAAB_54/vyxEVF34BJ0/s640/chicago1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> <span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Which is about two and a half hours before this photo was taken. It’s a shame there aren’t more by this photographer of Chicago in the collection. He or she had an eye for the panoramic view. Consider the way your eye moves from the pole in the foreground to the one at the middle space, and then to the Pabst sign sitting between them in the distant background. Your eye is led in towards the sign; a trick that professionals don’t always understand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-10xjQ1AKXms/Vj09bffPiaI/AAAAAAAB_6A/CS6gKXq81mg/s1600/chicago2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-10xjQ1AKXms/Vj09bffPiaI/AAAAAAAB_6A/CS6gKXq81mg/s640/chicago2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Okay it might be a fluke except that we see it again; less successfully if you want to argue that, but enough to demonstrate our photographer understands the interior design of a photograph. Janet Malcolm in her famous essay on vernacular photography, “Diana and Nikon”, struggled with the problem that an ordinary snapshot could be visually richer than work by professionals; the problem being that she wondered how to judge it without the standard parameters in place. And now the Pabst clock says it is 5:30.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uBAzj01xvrY/Vj09b4i8MEI/AAAAAAAB_6Y/5_kxCLKqqoE/s1600/chicago4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="610" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uBAzj01xvrY/Vj09b4i8MEI/AAAAAAAB_6Y/5_kxCLKqqoE/s640/chicago4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Chicago 1954: Syphilis took care of Al Capone some years back but the Outfit is alive and kicking. Whether Memphis Minnie knows it or not, her career is riding a steep slope downhill, but in a couple of years Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf will shake up England with the blues, and on June 19 the city, being several hundred miles from the coast, is struck by a tidal wave that kills eight people. Is our photographer here aware of any of that? Seems not.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NGrODTgwfeA/Vj09cOEmcUI/AAAAAAAB_6M/Sx13oT28vhI/s1600/chicago5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="586" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NGrODTgwfeA/Vj09cOEmcUI/AAAAAAAB_6M/Sx13oT28vhI/s640/chicago5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">But he/she has time to visit the Chicago Zoo in 1954, and who wouldn’t? Opened twenty(ish) years earlier, it was revolutionary in the way it removed the bars between spectator and animal. All that separated some vicious, slow-witted carnivores from the furrier mammals was a moat and a low fence. We could wonder who benefited most from this – human or animal – and here we see two polar bears sans anything like a protecting fence or safe distance. In other words, we (the people) got to imagine animals as though there was nothing between us and them. What did the polar bears think of this? Who has the foggiest to be honest, but the stretch of lawn is a nice touch. Bet they never saw that on the ice floe back home.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_j7ZhUJx5nI/Vj09ckyR7_I/AAAAAAAB_6U/_JcjSPdi7mU/s1600/chicago7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_j7ZhUJx5nI/Vj09ckyR7_I/AAAAAAAB_6U/_JcjSPdi7mU/s640/chicago7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">From the zoo to the aquarium, to the Shedd Aquarium to give it its proper monicker, despite ‘Shedd’ obviously being a thoughtless name for the world’s biggest aquarium and an institution that will boast of its size from the moment it was founded in 1930. Shedd was one of those figures common to America C1890-1920 who made a lot of money in ways only vaguely understood by the rest of us but poured a lot of it into public institutions like the eponymous aquarium, libraries and museums. One thinks of such entrepreneurs as being either great men or lesser men that have something guilt-like to deal with, but likable nevertheless for what they bequeathed. It’s possible the photographer wanted an exposure that filled the hall with light while showing the sea creatures floating about in detail but that could never be. What we get instead is something much better – a kind of modernist laboratory. What lies behind the glass in this scene? Something more mysterious than wrasse and perch.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6kJbL2lELFs/Vj09c94UF2I/AAAAAAAB_6c/ebSjlNSbBkI/s1600/chicago8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6kJbL2lELFs/Vj09c94UF2I/AAAAAAAB_6c/ebSjlNSbBkI/s640/chicago8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The visit to Chicago has been too short and too shallow. We barely get a sense of the second city. Back in the day, if we were to leave town, presumably because our luck had run out or because the local law enforcement officers encouraged us to, Union Station would be the place to head to. It was the kid of place that required a proper entrance, in a dark suit, grey rabbit fur homburg and a kipper tie. This view vanished years ago. That neo-classical thing in the foreground was replaced by an office tower seven times as high, four times as wide and twenty three times less interesting. This should come as no surprise. Like so many cities busily erasing their past, it is stuck back there and can never be genuinely contemporary. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WINDY"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150907.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WINDY?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CPVGkEW5P6k/Vj09UZW-FuE/AAAAAAAB_6g/Hlfj4cgvWa4/s160-c-Ic42/WINDY.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WINDY?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">WINDY</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/11/windy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-3962423518553258047Sat, 17 Oct 2015 23:53:00 +00002015-10-17T17:33:26.916-07:00BritainGeorge Edward AustinHeritageHistory of photographyreal photo postcardsseasideGREETINGS FROM EASTBOURNE<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Real photo postcards by George Austin and others</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">“I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it raging and roaring like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free and ending just where it began.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="background: white;">William Hazlitt</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KWowA6xdFks/ViLdrk0HPVI/AAAAAAAB_3I/BTP04W6udyw/s1600/eastbourne1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KWowA6xdFks/ViLdrk0HPVI/AAAAAAAB_3I/BTP04W6udyw/s640/eastbourne1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Eastbourne: a seaside town on the Sussex coast, halfway between Brighton and Hastings, known during the Victorian era for several grand hotels and one notorious murder when a teacher, Thomas Copley, caned his student Reginald Cancellor to death. Today it has an air of shabby gentility about it. The English used to specialize in shabby gentility; the Ealing comedies were essentially about nothing else. That may be a lost art in an age of ostentatious vulgarity but Eastbourne’s waterfront in the summer, with a chill wind blowing off the coast and bringing buckets of rain with it, holds out against the depredations of venality. Those pastel greens, oranges, mauves and pinks splashed across the seafront, the colours of a stick of Brighton rock left in a shop window for a couple of decades, are a reminder that what fades and decays can still have a faint pulse beat.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mZqN0vbls7Y/ViLdsKBdmHI/AAAAAAAB_3M/TTOzy0er8Y0/s1600/eastbourne4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mZqN0vbls7Y/ViLdsKBdmHI/AAAAAAAB_3M/TTOzy0er8Y0/s640/eastbourne4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">The point of going to Eastbourne has always been to leave, to head inland towards the kind of villages poets and other jolly chaps declared were the soul of England, or to head west and go up to Beachy Head, along what today is called the South Downs Way but back in 1910 was merely the crusty edge of England. The late Victorians and the Edwardians, the people who really developed the seaside town, held many dubious beliefs, particularly about the state of their bodies. One did not walk out to Beachy Head to marvel at the view so much as to improve circulation of the vessels surrounding the liver. This postcard is postmarked September 25 1915 but you can bet it was taken a few years earlier. The publisher was E. A. Schwerdtfiger and it was printed in Berlin. Look closely. The distant figure closest to the cliff edge at the right has one leg and a pair of crutches.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zNIw2RRnpLQ/ViLdsZbqHOI/AAAAAAAB_3c/diu-fb17h6o/s1600/eastbourne3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zNIw2RRnpLQ/ViLdsZbqHOI/AAAAAAAB_3c/diu-fb17h6o/s640/eastbourne3.jpg" width="404" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">But we are not in Eastbourne to talk about Germany or missing limbs. Much more interesting is George Edward Austin, photographer from the 1890s to the 1920s, who studio was at 70 Seaside (thanks again to <a href="http://www.sussexpostcards.info/publishers.php?PubID=9">Sussexpostcards.info</a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"> for the info on Sussex postcards) From the beginning Austin was a portrait photographer. It appears he wasn’t even vaguely interested in the kind of topographical views that people like Fred Judge and Leonard Horner were making a packet out of and never took one. So imagine spending your entire career taking photos of families like this one; a kind of spiritual death you’d think, but born in London’s east end slums in 1864 (Bromley-by-Bow; about the most depressing place for a Londoner to arrive in the world that year) Austin probably didn’t waste much time thinking about spiritual death. And no, we are not in Eastbourne to talk about George Austin’s philosophical opinions but a curious project he undertook and which we can think of as one he made his own.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-_BTXEDftc/ViLdtEuPkoI/AAAAAAAB_3k/IwRq1Wb_n_o/s1600/eastbourne5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-_BTXEDftc/ViLdtEuPkoI/AAAAAAAB_3k/IwRq1Wb_n_o/s640/eastbourne5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Beginning sometime between about 1905 and 1910 Austin began turning up to Eastbourne’s hotels to gather the guests and staff out the front and photograph them. According to the inscription in the lower left this was taken on August 4 1913, which the calendar for that year tells us was a bank holiday in England. The women are dressed the same as those in the Beachy Head photo and if they’re not the same individuals they are the same species; people who caught the train down to the seaside on Saturday afternoon and spent the next two days taking constitutionals. On a morning like August 4 1913 George Austin would be rushing between hotels and guest houses before they set out for the cliffs above lighthouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iFaS9vDaJN0/ViLdtSL3ohI/AAAAAAAB_3o/-iGe3NipxdI/s1600/eastbourne7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iFaS9vDaJN0/ViLdtSL3ohI/AAAAAAAB_3o/-iGe3NipxdI/s640/eastbourne7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">His thinking was infallible. If some photographers were making a living photographing holidaymakers on the promenade during the summer, it made sense to photograph as many people as possible at once, which logically expanded sales from one or two per photo taken to potentially dozens. He didn’t think this up himself. Earlier posts have featured ferries from the same era crowded with passengers who were expected to buy the postcard when the boat docked. Postcards from other photographers taken outside of hotels have also turned up, all of them from seaside resorts and mostly from Sussex and Kent. If the frequency with which his photos turn up in collections, Austin was the most prolific.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YfRmECRlXJE/ViLdt-CqrcI/AAAAAAAB_3w/VY4--opIIwM/s1600/eastbourne6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="418" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YfRmECRlXJE/ViLdt-CqrcI/AAAAAAAB_3w/VY4--opIIwM/s640/eastbourne6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">If his motives were entirely to do with economics, look at several of his photographs together and something else comes into play. They become a kind of typology, Eastbourne’s version of the Mass Observation project before its time. Raise a sceptical eyebrow and point out that his images are no different to those taken of school years or sports teams but that misses one important detail. Those are always of the collective as a single unit, hence the team stand together with arms crossed, or the class wear the same uniform. These photos are the opposite; people brought together whose only common bond was that they spent the night under the same roof. They didn’t even have to acknowledge each other in the dining room. That’s why we get a better dynamic: small cells with their own internal dynamics as opposed to the school or the team photo where everyone is the same age and often enough the same gender and who line up to stare dispassionately at the camera. Study one of these hotel photos closely and you discover people who don’t fit in, or someone’s odd gesture. All that aside, they are an object lesson in the ordinariness of life.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-inVEIYPZ8zY/ViLduFWeh7I/AAAAAAAB_30/AJI0RzaPHfk/s1600/eastbourne2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-inVEIYPZ8zY/ViLduFWeh7I/AAAAAAAB_30/AJI0RzaPHfk/s640/eastbourne2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Let’s leave George Austin, but not Eastbourne just yet. One of the odder genres of topographical postcard belongs to scenes of the interiors of convalescent homes, sanatoriums and other institutions for the infirm. Like the photos from outside hotels, these appear to be particular to the south east of England. Here we have one from the Merlynn in Eastbourne. What makes these different is that all other postcards were for tourists but these were for people who having arrived were not always expected to leave. The sitting room became their world. My theory is that they are a direct consequence of two world wars, when hundreds of thousands of former soldiers needed full time care, the south coast with its fresh air was thought to be the best place for them and so a quiet little town by the sea with comfortable armchairs, regularly emptied ashtrays and frequent pots of tea would sound perfect. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GREETINGSFROMEASTBOURNE"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150907.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GREETINGSFROMEASTBOURNE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-tmKtDT1tUWY/ViLdrYuRgUE/AAAAAAAB_4M/y4E6_874jCc/s160-c-Ic42/GREETINGSFROMEASTBOURNE.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/GREETINGSFROMEASTBOURNE?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">GREETINGS FROM EASTBOURNE</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/10/greetings-from-eastborne.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-3490473812210574979Sat, 12 Sep 2015 01:58:00 +00002015-09-11T18:59:09.478-07:00cinemaCitiesConstantinopledanceHistory of photographyreal photo postcardsSnapshotsTurkeyREMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Baskerville SemiBold Italic"; panose-1:2 2 7 2 7 4 0 9 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Snapshots and postcards from Istanbul’s glamorous past</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Frank Zappa</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGQzX43Ll2A/VfOEAM2rSHI/AAAAAAAB_zw/A_fJ7qVkbs8/s1600/remembrance13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JGQzX43Ll2A/VfOEAM2rSHI/AAAAAAAB_zw/A_fJ7qVkbs8/s640/remembrance13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB">The discovery of a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia </i>magazine at a bazaar in Ottawa was timely. Issue 51 from November 2014 has the cover story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Istanbul Unwrapped part 2: Beyoǧlu Boogie</i>splashed across a photo of five men in dinner suits laughing over their cocktails. The picture was a message to readers that back in the 1940s Istanbul had been more Paris than Paris, and a lot more fun.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QWkJXIA7nGU/VfOEAc_kuUI/AAAAAAAB_zs/TKbAKh1kxiI/s1600/remembrance11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QWkJXIA7nGU/VfOEAc_kuUI/AAAAAAAB_zs/TKbAKh1kxiI/s640/remembrance11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The timeliness has to do with news reports indicating that Washington has finally realized that Ankara’s deeper loyalties lie with ISIS, not the West. Long time observers may wonder why the U.S was so slow to catch on to the bleeding obvious but quite a few Turkish people will nod and remind whoever is listening that it only<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> looks</i> like Washington has acknowledged things very recently. In the grand chess plan, this admission is only a feint hiding darker ambitions. Turkey didn’t invent the conspiracy theory but it made it a work of art. In any case, what Washington is also admitting is that Turkey is no longer that beacon of Western Civ flashing its light across the barren sands of Islamic Asia. It has literally gone over to the dark side. Not so long ago - as in during the Cold War – that was unthinkable. Secularism was actually built into Turkey’s constitution, and it was one of the few countries that proclaimed religion as bad as Communism (How <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tres</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camus!</i>). It was also desperate to be European, particularly in the sense that European meant wearing hats by Dior, smoking Benson &amp; Hedges cigarettes and driving Mercedes Benzes. To President Erdoǧan and his associates secularism was an era that has now ended. Ultimately they want it purged from the national consciousness. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia</i> is a magazine that wants to preserve that past in aspic. It and the Government conduct their affairs apparently oblivious to each other. What’s interesting to us is the myths they both construct about that era.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7_VPgDNLbG8/VfOEA42rn5I/AAAAAAAB_z0/dOmgmOkdOI8/s1600/remembrance6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7_VPgDNLbG8/VfOEA42rn5I/AAAAAAAB_z0/dOmgmOkdOI8/s640/remembrance6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Cornucopia’s</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> aesthetics lie somewhere between those of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">National Geographic</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Food and Wine</i>. On one page we have a dervish whirling in the afternoon light filtering through a dusty window, on the next an array of white cheeses discovered at a local market. You can imagine. Politically it belongs somewhere between 1920s nationalism and 1950s secularism. Secretly, it longs to be woken at dawn by the graceful ululations of the muezzin (without the crackle of cheap loudspeakers), to sit down to a breakfast of yoghurt, figs and dried apricots before a morning practising on the baǧlama or learning the traditional methods of dyeing wool and spinning it into kilims. Its commitment to history may be sincere though its sentiments are dubious. To <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia</i> the era between the 1923 revolution and the 1960 coup was a golden age of Turkish culture, unrivalled except for that other semi-mythical age when Ottoman Constantinople flourished under Suleiman the Magnificent.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l6yWJfmb9bw/VfOEBVTlH3I/AAAAAAAB_z8/WngdOp-wPT0/s1600/remembrance8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="374" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l6yWJfmb9bw/VfOEBVTlH3I/AAAAAAAB_z8/WngdOp-wPT0/s640/remembrance8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">To President Erdoǧan and his faction in the AKP, this rose-tinted nostalgia isn’t just a longing for an age that may be more legend than reality but a Western attitude that is fundamentally orientalist. They have a case – the magazine advertises itself as “Turkey for connoisseurs”; a warning to lesser mortals to steer clear – but they (the AKP) actually indulge in an even more absurd nostalgia. For them there was an age more fabulous than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia’s</i>; when Turkish culture was governed by pious asceticism. Concrete evidence for the existence of this time and place is hard to find, except ironically in the writings of European travellers. For writers like Gustave Flaubert and Pierre Loti, the sight of a white robed muezzin calling from the balcony of a minaret evoked something Europe had lost in the Enlightenment.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j38zC21XvXI/VfOECFg5cEI/AAAAAAAB_0I/PI1d-ok-QgE/s1600/remembrance14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j38zC21XvXI/VfOECFg5cEI/AAAAAAAB_0I/PI1d-ok-QgE/s640/remembrance14.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Thanks to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia</i> we learn that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maxim’s </i>of Taxim (sic) was established and run by Frederick Thomas, a black American who had run nightclubs in Moscow during the Bolshevik Revolution: why isn’t he better known? It’s a bit like giving Dooley Wilson the lead role in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Casablanca. </i>Instead we got a 1957 remake,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Istanbul</i>, starring Errol Flynn and Cornell Borchers. Back in town after a brief spot of diamond smuggling, Flynn turns up to a hotel in Sultanahmet to discover former girlfriend Borchers towing behind her new husband, while Nat King Cole is the house pianist. Well, who wouldn’t be delighted? Of course, when Hollywood portrayed Istanbul as sophisticated, what it really meant was that it was exotic. As usual with all its films set in the eastern Mediterranean, we know the city’s male inhabitants can’t be trusted because they are either slovenly or effeminate.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6V3X4HLngGw/VfOEC4YlIkI/AAAAAAAB_0M/VGQTSZ3m_8A/s1600/remembrance7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="474" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6V3X4HLngGw/VfOEC4YlIkI/AAAAAAAB_0M/VGQTSZ3m_8A/s640/remembrance7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Istanbul’s music scene of the 1940s was heavily occupied by Turks quick not just to embrace but make a Xerox copy of Western music and especially jazz. Meanwhile black musicians having a tough time in the States were heading over to Europe, which led them to Istanbul, where they discovered eastern modals. In the 50s Turkish jazz bands would be pumping out the very worst of Dixieland while over in the U.S Art Blakey, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane were discovering a whole new way of thinking based on Turkish music.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xP6DzQ1PILU/VfOEDP6P5LI/AAAAAAAB_0U/SgGRDuglePo/s1600/theatre296.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="432" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xP6DzQ1PILU/VfOEDP6P5LI/AAAAAAAB_0U/SgGRDuglePo/s640/theatre296.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span lang="EN-GB">A conceit of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Cornucopia’s </i>article is that this world can still be found. Turn left here and walk down a laneway that hasn’t changed in half a century. Enter this shop and step back in time. Nostalgia is a form of fraud, as is its opposite (a concept that interestingly enough has no single word for it in English). In post revolution Turkey history was something best to forget, or at least to rewrite, and if they were difficult then laugh at it.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7TcbFUVZnFQ/VfOED6GmlRI/AAAAAAAB_0g/WdhVFT2wOT8/s1600/remembrance10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7TcbFUVZnFQ/VfOED6GmlRI/AAAAAAAB_0g/WdhVFT2wOT8/s640/remembrance10.jpg" width="482" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The past hasn’t completely vanished. Anyone who wanders through the narrow strip of laneways between Istiklal and Cihangir can tell at once that this was once a land of seedy yet staunchly </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Baskerville SemiBold Italic&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">à la mode</span> <span lang="EN-GB">nightclubs. Until about five years ago some of the old cinema palaces around Istiklal, like the Alkazar and the Emek, survived. The Emek was vast, with elaborate galleries and even the way the curtains drew back on the screen was graceful and majestic. The film might be rubbish but you felt you were at an event. This image was taken at a cinema over in Aksaray in the 1940s. Back then the neighbourhood was a residential area under the shadow of Istanbul’s great mosques and the nearby Grand Bazaar. Today it is ugly and dishevelled, dissected by a highway and best known as a centre for sex trafficking.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FSJFuPuowf4/VfOEEnWuWZI/AAAAAAAB_0o/_upqgYV_3n8/s1600/remembrance16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FSJFuPuowf4/VfOEEnWuWZI/AAAAAAAB_0o/_upqgYV_3n8/s640/remembrance16.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The long Ottoman era – but especially the last century – had been defined by exclusion. Women were not permitted here, non-Muslims could not go there, Muslim men could only enter this place so long as they didn’t eat this or touch that eat this and so on, ad nauseum. Even Protestants had more fun than that. As Ataturk understood secularism, people could believe and do as they wanted. To the neo-Ottomans this effectively unleashed a form of anarchy upon a nation conditioned to doing what it was told.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zl2VAkLUT6A/VfOEFHX3T1I/AAAAAAAB_0s/-ou9N7zRoR4/s1600/remembrance4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zl2VAkLUT6A/VfOEFHX3T1I/AAAAAAAB_0s/-ou9N7zRoR4/s640/remembrance4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Even so, Turkey’s entrance into the modern world remained a celebration for the privileged: wealthy Turks who privately supported westernization, and the still powerful non-Muslim communities of Armenians, Greeks and Jews. In his memoir, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Portrait of a Turkish Family</i>, Irfan Orga describes the morning after the proclamation of the republic as quiet and still, the streets mostly empty, the businesses shuttered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>No one was really sure what the end of empire meant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wm-BlYhZY64/VfOD-qw80iI/AAAAAAAB_zc/7Wftmwq0AUk/s1600/remembrance1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wm-BlYhZY64/VfOD-qw80iI/AAAAAAAB_zc/7Wftmwq0AUk/s640/remembrance1.jpg" width="484" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The feeling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cornucopia</i> wants to impart is that Istanbul 1923 – 1959 was about the most exciting city on the planet. The French may disagree but they never had that sense of kicking against the pricks that drove Istanbul’s culture; or as Parisian Jean Cocteau put it: ‘Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else, and failing’. Only when it wanted to be Paris did 20<sup>th</sup>century Istanbul discover its real identity. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/REMEMBRANCEOFTHINGSPAST"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150907.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/REMEMBRANCEOFTHINGSPAST?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-odZsQMrMG4c/VfOD-EWZ36E/AAAAAAAB_0w/atfhhiIEjD0/s160-c-Ic42/REMEMBRANCEOFTHINGSPAST.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/REMEMBRANCEOFTHINGSPAST?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/09/remembrance-of-things-past.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-4359288562164365658Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:51:00 +00002015-08-13T18:13:51.045-07:00BritainHistory of photographyportraitsstudio portraitsA FACE IN THE CROWD<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">&nbsp;</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>7 portraits found at Spitalfields Market</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“<span style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.</span>”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Frida Kahlo</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VB_h3S-9MHk/Vc05lqEj9mI/AAAAAAAB_v4/sLDOrfj9wdM/s1600/face7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VB_h3S-9MHk/Vc05lqEj9mI/AAAAAAAB_v4/sLDOrfj9wdM/s400/face7.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">At London’s Spitalfields Markets on a Thursday (which may not be heaven for photo collectors but is close enough) one of the stall operators was busy cutting up proof sheets of portraits. Each sheet had about fifty photographs, each of these three by three centimetres, and wisely or otherwise she had decided that selling the photos individually rather than the sheet was more profitable. You’d think someone would snap up a sheet of fifty portraits of the same person, each from a different angle or with a different expression, but then just one photo is a find in itself. These probably came from the same studio and one is dated July 1943. With the exception of the one above, the subjects have written a message on the back to someone else.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lJPjA04md-4/Vc05mUlA1bI/AAAAAAAB_wM/J-tPguLMHhg/s1600/face3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lJPjA04md-4/Vc05mUlA1bI/AAAAAAAB_wM/J-tPguLMHhg/s400/face3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To dear Pat, wishing you all the best Daphne.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Now, several weeks and a few thousand kilometres away from Spitalfields, I regret not buying the lot, but if I had a dollar for every time I held back from an impetuous buy … In any case, seven is a good number being just a little more than too few without being so many as to be monotonous. Pollsters use the term ‘snapshot’ to describe a sample that is too small to be statistically relevant but which might reveal a trend. Here we have a snapshot of a part of society that mattered a lot in 1943 – young middle class women who were too young to be married but wouldn’t be in a couple of years, when Adolf and his horde of storm-troopers had been vanquished and society was on the road to being put right again. As the old vicar might put it in his Sunday sermon; thousands may have died defending Britain but from the loins of these young lasses would spring forth England’s future. I believe that is exactly how vicars spoke back then.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tn57FEGV658/Vc05myHzBrI/AAAAAAAB_wE/075ZE38ywHY/s1600/face1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tn57FEGV658/Vc05myHzBrI/AAAAAAAB_wE/075ZE38ywHY/s400/face1.jpg" width="390" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To Knock Knock with love from Jeanne.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">‘Knock Knock’ is, I suspect, the nickname of a woman. At least, in a Muriel Spark short story Knock Knock would be a girl’s name, belonging to someone who either possessed a ‘dear’ sense of humour, meaning that she tried awfully hard but seldom raised so much as a snicker, or she was famed for her bad timing. We don’t need to know anything about Knock Knock’s milieu; her nickname tells us everything. She will marry a nice, professionally adequate, emotionally ineffective man. Jeanne won’t, but she might wish she had.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0kPQ2Mm1a5E/Vc05nTVuMyI/AAAAAAAB_wc/YZ0fu12Ja4Y/s1600/face2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="391" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0kPQ2Mm1a5E/Vc05nTVuMyI/AAAAAAAB_wc/YZ0fu12Ja4Y/s400/face2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To Patricia, in memory of many awkward moments in the back line and a few blissful moments of graduation, with much love from Sonia. </span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Well this tells us something we might have already guessed but needed evidence to confirm. These girls are graduating from high school, or as the English had it back then, Fifth Form. This idea of getting a block of photos printed that could then be distributed among school friends is a custom we have seen in Turkey and in France and it makes sense as lives are now about to diverge and in some cases plunge headfirst into the unknown. Others will have things mapped out, including marriage to that lad currently flying his Spitfire above the Channel in search of the Hun. The back line, if we are talking sports, is most likely hockey or netball. Awkward moments probably refers to goals let through, and perhaps it was fat, ungainly Patricia who took the (dis)credit for that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHESjEXCe4w/Vc05nyocGVI/AAAAAAAB_wU/gq_e28WHnbI/s1600/face4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="380" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHESjEXCe4w/Vc05nyocGVI/AAAAAAAB_wU/gq_e28WHnbI/s400/face4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To one of the sacred-ites, love and best wishes, Nancy. </span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sacred-ites tells us we are dealing with what the English confusingly refer to as a public school (meaning one that is ruthlessly exclusive) and it remains a rule that a public school with ‘sacred heart’ in its name is for girls because that is a distinctly feminine concept. We can’t be sure; perhaps there was a clique of young lasses known as the sacred-ites on account of their direct access to the headmistress in matters of class discipline, but I think Nancy was writing out farewell messages as fast as she could on account of her hurry to be rid of the place. Not for her a year in secretarial college followed by marriage to Captain Smithers-Jones with his one leg and his war pension. No. We think Nancy had been seeing an American G.I on the side and was already convinced that Oklahoma was everything London wasn’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eMu1zIbvV08/Vc05olPVbxI/AAAAAAAB_wk/BOzJM50j1Og/s1600/face5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="393" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eMu1zIbvV08/Vc05olPVbxI/AAAAAAAB_wk/BOzJM50j1Og/s400/face5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To dear old Pat, in memory of all those good old times and I hope some more in the future. Much love Audrey, July 1943</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The idea of having these small portraits taken then distributing them among your classmates, even girls you could not have walked past without a shudder in the last five years, touching, not the least because it would be unthinkable today. Whatever the younger generation exchange today (I rather hope it is smallpox and they all die out soon) there is something very much symbolically permanent about the photograph. It says, ‘remember me always, but remember me as I was, not what I shall be’. Somehow we leave school and get thrown into life’s gnashing jaws without taking stock of that simple plea. Years later we read a story in the newspaper of some sad event and all we have is that fleeting memory of a face to give it substance. How much sometimes we’d like a photo, a physical reminder of someone we once knew, even if that was against our will.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zEu36FxkeeQ/Vc05pDmW19I/AAAAAAAB_wo/dBGwUiRhWZA/s1600/face6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zEu36FxkeeQ/Vc05pDmW19I/AAAAAAAB_wo/dBGwUiRhWZA/s400/face6.jpg" width="390" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">To Grandma, with all the very best in your dancing career, Joy Gelden.</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The best is saved for last; a brief message laced with cruelty. Grandma? In my day there were only two reasons girls at a public school would call one of their own that and it had to do with either her outdated principles or a physical handicap. Perhaps Grandma refused when it came to having a fag behind the gardener’s shed but in my experience dancers are more than fond of that idea. And let’s not ignore the obvious, that ‘grandma’ and ‘dancing career’ shouldn’t go together without at least a little vinegar to bind them. The feeling is that Joy couldn’t care less about Grandma’s dancing and actually finds the idea of turning it into an earner more than preposterous. But this is wartime and things are changing. Let’s go forward ten years, to the Royal Albert Hall, and as Grandma returns for the third encore she bows and through the dense tobacco smoke catches a glimpse of a sweaty, bilious figure in the fourth row. “Is that Joy?” She thinks as she bows again. “Heard she married that MP who got done for young boys last month. Poor girl.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/AFACEINTHECROWD"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE </span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150804.00_p1/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/AFACEINTHECROWD?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GlJu0npXr94/Vc05lBZwtDE/AAAAAAAB_xI/wK6tKWlsAq8/s160-c-Ic42/AFACEINTHECROWD.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/AFACEINTHECROWD?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">A FACE IN THE CROWD</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-face-in-crowd.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-5332814149390084326Sat, 08 Aug 2015 00:42:00 +00002015-08-07T17:53:25.946-07:00actorsactressesBritainfashionHistory of photographyLallie CharlesNapoleonreal photo postcardsRita MartintheatreTHE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Baskerville SemiBold Italic"; panose-1:2 2 7 2 7 4 0 9 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} span.apple-converted-space {mso-style-name:apple-converted-space;} @page Section1 {size:595.0pt 842.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Real photo postcards from the Edwardian stage</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Romance at short notice was her specialty.”</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Saki; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Open Window</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zYkjogPMt2o/VcVM79yy-cI/AAAAAAAB_ts/DLKO_nK6nKM/s1600/vtilley1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zYkjogPMt2o/VcVM79yy-cI/AAAAAAAB_ts/DLKO_nK6nKM/s640/vtilley1.jpg" width="404" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Real photo postcards of actresses are one of the enduring legacies of the Edwardian era; ‘enduring’ to mean lasting although the general impression from a recent visit to the Spitalfields Market was that interminable would be more apt. Not surprising when you read how many thousands of millions of postcards were published then sent each year of the 1900s and how photos of stage actresses were far and above the most popular category in Britain. But amidst the glut of portraits of women in ubiquitous broad-brimmed, feathery hats and puffy blouses, with their stiff composures and curiously sexless expressions, there are occasional images that catch the eye. Just about every one of Hettie King will do that. She was one of several actresses who made an art of male impersonation. It seems that while transvestitism among the citizenry could always create an absolute scandal in the late Victorian and Edwardian era, gender impersonation in the theatre was a specialized skill and in demand, with none of the connotations of sexual or political transgression apparent today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Of course, Ms King was a comic actress: she played the man for laughs, and laughs in the Edwardian theatre were often of the double entendre type.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6UZWo8swjjI/VcVM9XZoxgI/AAAAAAAB_t0/GHEuPXarATc/s1600/zdare1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6UZWo8swjjI/VcVM9XZoxgI/AAAAAAAB_t0/GHEuPXarATc/s640/zdare1.jpg" width="406" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">It was already a convention in pantomime that the crotchety widow or the scheming stepmother was played by a man; this was comedy after all. When J. M. Barrie’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peter Pan</i> debuted in 1904 it was standard for the lead character to be played by a young actress. The play’s subtitle was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the boy who wouldn’t grow up</i>and gender ambiguity was a useful metaphor for somebody trapped in a physical and emotional cocoon. Zena Dare was one of the first actresses to play Peter Pan. Here she is as Napoleon, another comedic role for which the English typically cast women. Well that must have stung Gallic pride, or perhaps not since the Paris music halls had long taken cross-dressing to places the English theatre nervously avoided.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D2lF2J_ur5M/VcVM9g8aqtI/AAAAAAAB_t8/HTS4iXIoCtk/s1600/rayelsie1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D2lF2J_ur5M/VcVM9g8aqtI/AAAAAAAB_t8/HTS4iXIoCtk/s640/rayelsie1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Zena Dare is one of those people, like Gabrielle Ray. Lily Elsie and Marie Studholme, who were prolifically photographed for postcards in the 1900s yet whose name barely stirs a hint of recognition today. This is inevitable when we think of the thousands of actresses and advances in technology since the 1900s, yet it might be also reflect a particularly British attitude. Where the French loved scandal and their theatre stars made the most of that, over the Channel the female artistes were presented as having much more sensible private lives. If the reputations of <span style="background: white;">Cléo de Mérode</span> and Caroline Otero live on it is for their behaviour off-stage whereas someone who enjoyed a few years in the West End limelight then married well and retired from the stage to cross breed apples on the Sussex Downs would at best be damned with faint praise by being heralded as a national treasure.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-msw-WyXIq54/VcVM-WraAFI/AAAAAAAB_uE/kW3uTBFIxzI/s1600/gabray1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-msw-WyXIq54/VcVM-WraAFI/AAAAAAAB_uE/kW3uTBFIxzI/s640/gabray1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Not everyone was so apparently blessed. During the first decade of the last century, Gabrielle Ray was reckoned to be the most photographed woman in the world. Though she was acclaimed as an actress and dancer, a look at her </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Baskerville SemiBold Italic&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">résumé suggests she wasn’t being called to play Lady Macbeth or Juliet or any of the other roles that defined a special talent. It may have been her looks alone that attracted so much attention, in which case her tragedy was as typical as it was awful. Agents, directors, producers – especially fat, white and ugly ones – can love a face without caring what lies behind. Even a casual reading of Ray’s biographical details suggests her alcoholism had something to do with her being marketed for her face not her acting. In 1936 she suffered yet another breakdown and spent the rest of her life – all thirty seven years of it – in psychiatric institutions. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Baskerville SemiBold Italic&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">Here’s a good quote from Ray found on the <a href="https://footlightnotes.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/gabrielle-ray-1883-1973-english-musical-comedy-8/">Footlight Notes</a> page. As she makes clear, kissing was fun in 1906, but not as much as tearing about the countryside in a motor car:</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">I have done a lot of motoring, but very little kissing. At the same time, I think it would be a pity to discourage those who like kissing because it seems to please them very much. If I have by accident kissed anyone I have never heard any complaint about my mouths; but there, you see, I put cream on my face when going out in a motor-car, because before I used to do so the wind made my face very dry.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NwOTSL2ukYE/VcVM-xEEMZI/AAAAAAAB_uQ/2fft5F4dnQc/s1600/mjeffries1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NwOTSL2ukYE/VcVM-xEEMZI/AAAAAAAB_uQ/2fft5F4dnQc/s640/mjeffries1.jpg" width="402" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">We’ll get back to the subjects but we can’t ignore the photographers: William Downey and his son Daniel, Alexander Bassano, the sisters Rita Martin and Lallie Charles (previously discussed <a href="http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.ca/2014/12/my-fair-lady.html">HERE</a>) and Francis Foulsham and Arthur Banfield, whose work Cecil Beaton dismissed as “rather quaint in (its) woodenness”. To be fair, that same criticism could have been levelled at most of the photographers, and to be fair again, it wasn’t always their fault. You get the impression with some people that they couldn’t make the intellectual jump between appearing on stage and before a still camera. Maud Jeffries was an international star, pulling in full houses from London to New York to Sydney, especially for the faux biblical epic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sign of the Cross</i>. You wouldn’t know it from this image. She looks like someone shoved a </span><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">papier-mâché</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">crucifix in her hands and told her to look fearful of the Lord. This inability to perform for the camera is a common complaint from the period, and comes from photographers, producers and actors. Numerous Edwardian performers will spurn the cinema while others will take it on and fail. The typical explanation is that the actor needs the human presence, the applause and even the heckling, in order to perform.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKJl3oDySRc/VcVM_NKr_BI/AAAAAAAB_uU/OmriNJqvPg4/s1600/pdare1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKJl3oDySRc/VcVM_NKr_BI/AAAAAAAB_uU/OmriNJqvPg4/s640/pdare1.jpg" width="412" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Being a photographer to the stars carried responsibilities. The studios above also photographed royalty and anyone else who required an official portrait. What mattered most to their non-theatrical subjects – royals, politicians, etc – was that there be no surprises. Politicians showed gravitas, the prince dignity. They were expected to be a lot more creative with stage performers, which could be hard when the process was a treadmill. Faced with a client list of several dozen performers, each demanding the special touch, even the best photographers could exhaust their repertoire. In the same way, some tricks could startle at first but quickly became clichéd. Phyllis Dare was Zena Dare’s sister. Born in 1890, she began acting when she was nine and by the time she was fifteen was a star in light comedies. When she was seventeen (around the time this photo was taken) she published her autobiography and became one of the first in a long line of juvenile performers to author a necessarily thin and vacuous account of a life so far unlived. The title was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From School to Stage</i>, which sounds like it covered everything.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eUDmCF3Kip0/VcVM_rFILDI/AAAAAAAB_ug/G6P5r3Do4DA/s1600/studholme1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eUDmCF3Kip0/VcVM_rFILDI/AAAAAAAB_ug/G6P5r3Do4DA/s640/studholme1.jpg" width="416" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">For some of us, the very definition of a perfect Friday afternoon involves sitting down with a pile of century old directories and tracking down long forgotten photographic studios. No matter what joys the exercise holds, there are times when running into brick walls becomes tiring. Who was Kilpatrick? It was usual though not compulsory to attribute the photographer or studio on the postcard but Rotary, which published the card, only licensed the image. There was a studio belonging to a Kilpatrick in Dublin and if Ms Studholme travelled to that city for a performance and the studio paid to photograph her, it could have sold the image on to Rotary. Given that Ms Studholme performed in America and what the English quaintly refer to as ‘the colonies’, the studio could have been anywhere in the English speaking world. Her costume here looks Wagnerian, but operetta rather than opera.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cFAmWsOddlc/VcVNAbS7j7I/AAAAAAAB_uk/uuCFAsGmptc/s1600/lbrayton1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cFAmWsOddlc/VcVNAbS7j7I/AAAAAAAB_uk/uuCFAsGmptc/s640/lbrayton1.jpg" width="404" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Here’s another minor mystery. This portrait of Lily Brayton is credited to Johnston and Hoffman, recognized as one of the leading studios at the time – in Calcutta. The National Portrait Gallery in London have 52 portraits by the company in their archives, mostly of theatrical stars. Either we are talking about two companies having the same name or Johnston and Hoffmann opened a branch in London. The latter seems more likely, but if so you’d think that would warrant a mention in the entries found in various encyclopaedias. Once again we have a case of the gender role reversals and while there is a passably interesting history of women dressing as eighteenth century highwaymen, what’s really interesting about this is that we see a really professional use of electric lighting. This was uncommon in the early 1900s. Electric lighting was still too expensive for a lot of studios and even those who could afford it needed to relearn photography to understand how to use it properly.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UwcDihcZqO8/VcVNAhFhKyI/AAAAAAAB_us/jq7UmsfXIKM/s1600/gsinclair1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UwcDihcZqO8/VcVNAhFhKyI/AAAAAAAB_us/jq7UmsfXIKM/s640/gsinclair1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Dover Street Studios are another commonly encountered name. Interesting that among a dozen or so sighted, variations on the Gibson girl look are prominent. It looks like the studio had an agenda. The GG’s identifying features were her hairstyle and the long, tight dress or gown, both seen here in Ms Gertie Sinclair. It was actually a North American fashion. The graphic artist who designed the look, Charles Dana Gibson, wanted to capture the essence of the ideal American women, whose very modernness he attributed to a composite of cultural ethnicities and attitudes. I don’t know how successfully the Gibson Girl caught on in Britain.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q2fQD8u459Q/VcVNBOn8QjI/AAAAAAAB_u4/Pzgpb_KG1dU/s1600/gertiemillar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q2fQD8u459Q/VcVNBOn8QjI/AAAAAAAB_u4/Pzgpb_KG1dU/s640/gertiemillar.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The cabbage is a nice touch. Here Ms Millar wears the costermonger’s outfit that inspired the original pearly kings and queens, Like Peter Pan, Aladdin was an obviously male figure commonly played by women and the musical, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Aladdin </i>transplanted the oriental story to London.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ngsTi35oEMs/VcVNBqvxrrI/AAAAAAAB_u8/6CutY5EqoLs/s1600/moores1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ngsTi35oEMs/VcVNBqvxrrI/AAAAAAAB_u8/6CutY5EqoLs/s640/moores1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Here’s a well-known study of the Moores, theatrical family of course, of whom Decima and Eva became the best known. As discussed in the post on Rita Martin, the relationship between the theatrical world and the suffragettes was more convoluted than you might think, and thanks in no small part to the suffragettes habit of throwing gas bombs into theatres and ruining performances. The Moores however were firmly behind the movement to give women the vote and were among the founders of the Actresses’ Franchise League, which among other activities produced the plays, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How the Vote was Won</i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Votes for Women</i>. I want to say more but do the research yourself. It’s worth the effort.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzN0DPwvVM0/VcVNB5gbayI/AAAAAAAB_vI/9ppv5tWDB8s/s1600/evamoore1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzN0DPwvVM0/VcVNB5gbayI/AAAAAAAB_vI/9ppv5tWDB8s/s640/evamoore1.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">And here is Eva Moore with her son in an image that is strange on several levels though in Edwardian England it would have met with widespread approval. These portraits of actresses with their children are more than commonplace. They are a reminder of the sharp distinction between London and Paris, where it was advisable for an actress not to indicate she had a family. They were also a protest against the popular image of the stage as the home of outcasts and other ne’er do wells. How better to show the world that the theatre was not only glamorous but also respectable than by showing actress mums with their kids. Except of course that young Master Moore looks miserable, as you might if Mum had made you put on a clown costume then dragged you before a camera.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zj-R4yDRzzY/VcVNCkEawAI/AAAAAAAB_vM/DPtv2hQmBCk/s1600/mscott1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zj-R4yDRzzY/VcVNCkEawAI/AAAAAAAB_vM/DPtv2hQmBCk/s640/mscott1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">There are of course many postcards of male actors and there is a world waiting to be read in the differences between the two, but let’s end with an image of one of the best known female impersonators of the age, Malcolm Scott. Like Hettie King, his choice of role was no indication of his orientation and it seems he lived an otherwise ordinary life with wife and family in the suburbs. What’s to like about this photo of course is its various assumptions. We are told that is Mr Scott but we don’t know for sure. For all we know it could be Hettie King playing Malcolm Scott playing Hettie King; a conundrum we think made perfect sense to the Edwardians. We are lucky that so many of these photographs lie scattered throughout flea markets in abundance. In an age when some people think they can charge small fortunes for snapshots they didn’t take but bought for 25 cents, it’s great to have so many images from the Edwardian theatre, a world that is both familiar and disruptive.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEIMPORTANCEOFBEINGEARNEST"> </a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEIMPORTANCEOFBEINGEARNEST"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150804.00_p1/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEIMPORTANCEOFBEINGEARNEST?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-lxWGvnN8lpQ/VcVM7BlY9YE/AAAAAAAB_vU/kRx_QcNgV5U/s160-c-Ic42/THEIMPORTANCEOFBEINGEARNEST.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEIMPORTANCEOFBEINGEARNEST?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-importance-of-being-earnest.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-6077999001027170319Sun, 26 Jul 2015 00:15:00 +00002015-07-25T17:15:37.707-07:00BritainfashionHistory of photographyreal photo postcardsthe beachWalkingWALK DON'T RUN<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Helvetica Neue"; panose-1:2 0 5 3 0 0 0 2 0 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; color:purple; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">English street photographs from the 1930s-1940s</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.”</span></i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;&nbsp; Margaret Sackville</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o7Wt5zi8ObY/VbQjXa5F4cI/AAAAAAAB-4g/AukagGVghd8/s1600/walkie4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o7Wt5zi8ObY/VbQjXa5F4cI/AAAAAAAB-4g/AukagGVghd8/s640/walkie4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Of all the forms of commercial, domestic photography practiced during the middle years of the last century, that which belonged to the itinerant street photographer was the most diligent in its ordinariness. Armed with a medium format camera, a flashgun, a fistful of business cards and a resolute nerve, photographers took up position on particular street corners, at either end of bridges and outside department stores and fired away at passers-by. They cared nothing for the quality of their images but worked with the confidence that most of their printed images would look the same. Unlike studios for whom a painted backdrop or a style of lighting could be a hallmark, these photographers were after the ultimate in innocuity: they wanted their work to look just like everyone else’s.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GLrqaVBCzWE/VbQjYcB6y0I/AAAAAAAB-4o/t42ZwSnYdW8/s1600/walkie7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GLrqaVBCzWE/VbQjYcB6y0I/AAAAAAAB-4o/t42ZwSnYdW8/s640/walkie7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">The street photographers were pedestrian in every sense of the word. They weren’t keen on photographing themselves so we don’t have many images of them at work yet we imagine a kind of shabbiness: an overcoat stained where passing traffic has thrown up mud, a tie that has become loose as they jump out in front of people all day then chase them with their cards and a hat picked up too many times from a grimy pavement. It was a job that required a polite but tough edge. You couldn’t let passers-by pass you by without getting them to pay for the photo. Once they had done that and received the business card with the I.D number on it and the reminder to call by tomorrow, it was time to chase after the next person. The lunch hours between twelve and two would be especially hectic, as would be the end of the typical workday around five or six. During both periods the population on the street swelled but just as importantly the photographers were likely to catch a customer in a good mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>What with a steak pie and a couple of real ales under his belt a man would be more willing to pay for a snap than if he was hungry or he had to hurry back to a pile of paperwork.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CGEST6NnAiU/VbQjYr-yIVI/AAAAAAAB-40/7DdTC7Bw2ZI/s1600/walkie6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CGEST6NnAiU/VbQjYr-yIVI/AAAAAAAB-40/7DdTC7Bw2ZI/s640/walkie6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">All of these postcards come from Britain though itinerant street photographers were found across the globe. Away from London and the big cities they haunted the seaside towns, where again, vacationers were likely to be in a good mood. Like climbing into the fake car or putting your head through the hole above the painted female body, having your photo taken on the pier or the promenade was probably one of those things you did on a holiday at Margate or Blackpool.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k8Vi9CHoeAA/VbQjZCLwgNI/AAAAAAAB-48/UhQld38hDnc/s1600/walkie5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="390" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k8Vi9CHoeAA/VbQjZCLwgNI/AAAAAAAB-48/UhQld38hDnc/s640/walkie5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The giveaway for itinerant walking pictures is the number usually scratched on the negative but sometimes stamped on the back. Prices varied but a standard three and a half by five inch postcard cost around twelve shillings or (roughly) half a pound. Getting a group this large together probably took some effort to organize but the pay-off was several pounds in orders. My guess is that the photographers worked for commission. The more they sold the more they were paid so a photo like this represented a small coup.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8r84mnSYSY/VbQjZUZyLNI/AAAAAAAB-5A/xcJonQgOVeY/s1600/walkie1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8r84mnSYSY/VbQjZUZyLNI/AAAAAAAB-5A/xcJonQgOVeY/s640/walkie1.jpg" width="392" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We know the names of some of the companies because the postcard carried their names stamped on the back. According to this useful site, <a href="https://gohomeonapostcard.wordpress.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walking Pictures</i></a>, walking photos were just one service the typical company offered along with standard interior portraits, processing and printing and film and camera sales. To paraphrase Keith Richards on his music: “Art was short for Arthur”.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-77p59AlTu4U/VbQjZwpz06I/AAAAAAAB-5M/Rx-WcOOjsr0/s1600/walkie3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-77p59AlTu4U/VbQjZwpz06I/AAAAAAAB-5M/Rx-WcOOjsr0/s640/walkie3.jpg" width="390" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Yet if thinking of these images as art is frivolous we shouldn’t otherwise think of them as trivial. Like the actual photographer, the people in the photos are usually anonymous but these belong to the age of Mass Observation and the Recording Britain project, when documenting British society in thorough detail was believed to be a valuable research process for understanding how the nation’s future stood to unfold. What we ended up with was a vast collective snapshot of Britain. Admittedly most of the subjects are happy, there is really nothing to illuminate what was troubling them or whether they even cared about the well-being of the nation, but there are clues in the ways that people dress, their postures and in other minor details that tell us not to trust the usual stereotypes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DYK45Dajjr0/VbQjaAsgmDI/AAAAAAAB-5Q/AsDFyREjDn0/s1600/walkie8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DYK45Dajjr0/VbQjaAsgmDI/AAAAAAAB-5Q/AsDFyREjDn0/s640/walkie8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Sometimes banality is so intense, the idea or the image gets repeated so often that it passes through monotony and becomes compelling. We can get this with these images, in the way they draw us into the illusion that we are able to read something about the people or the society from them. And then there is the statistic that there are so many millions of them out there that surely their presence must amount to something worthwhile.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WALKDONTRUN"> </a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WALKDONTRUN"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150712.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WALKDONTRUN?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_4LbSK1-cE4/VbQjWdrByWE/AAAAAAAB-5c/tWK055Mvf1g/s160-c-Ic42/WALKDONTRUN.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/WALKDONTRUN?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">WALK DON'T RUN</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/07/walk-dont-run.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-4758814355504387778Fri, 26 Jun 2015 01:45:00 +00002015-06-25T18:45:50.347-07:00ConstantinopledeathHistory of photographyreal photo postcardsrural lifeSnapshotsTurkeyTHE ART OF DYING<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Turkish snapshots of death.</span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></i><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“As nothing in this life that I’ve been trying</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Could equal or surpass the art of dying</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Do you believe me?”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">George Harrison: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Art of Dying</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pQLX-laGdHA/VYyrIEtAtJI/AAAAAAAB-Z8/_Re9YLGwFQc/s1600/turkdeath5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="458" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pQLX-laGdHA/VYyrIEtAtJI/AAAAAAAB-Z8/_Re9YLGwFQc/s640/turkdeath5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></i><span lang="EN-GB">One afternoon I was being driven in a taxi along the highway to a job in one of the industrial zones that ring Istanbul. Whenever someone says,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“I was in a taxi in Istanbul” assume that unless it was stuck in a kilometres long traffic jam it was moving at breakneck speed. A hearse was parked on the shoulder ahead. Turkish hearses are not elaborately converted Oldsmobiles or Cadillacs. They look more like green farmer’s trucks with open beds at the back and, like the one ahead, are often dilapidated. A pine coffin was jutting out the back. As we drew level I caught a glimpse of the driver puffing on a cigarette before the scene swiftly fell away into the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>No doubt this was a situation with a plausible explanation but it’s the case that in every other country I’ve lived in, a driver pulling his hearse over for a fag on the highway wouldn’t be tolerated if he had a coffin in the back. That said, when we see something strange in other countries it is easy to think that it’s part of the culture. Who knows what the other drivers zipping past thought of it. One thing I’m sure of: in an age of increasing cultural homogeneity, we can eat Turkish food, wear Turkish clothes, use Turkish phrases, have Turkish style weddings and give our offspring Turkish names and we don’t even need to visit the country. We cannot however have Turkish funerals. The rituals and customs surrounding death remain inviolate. To suggest a Turkish style funeral for a non-Turkish person would be in bad taste, not to mention disorientating to mourners. This is why snapshots about death can tell us things about a culture others can’t. Anglo-Saxon funerals are solemn affairs. Grief is personal and expressed discreetly. Not so in Turkey where they can be noisy and public.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G5CrQ8Oabjg/VYyrIuagn9I/AAAAAAAB-aE/jU4oGSAMYPM/s1600/anatomyScan-120728-0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G5CrQ8Oabjg/VYyrIuagn9I/AAAAAAAB-aE/jU4oGSAMYPM/s640/anatomyScan-120728-0001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Another story: I was sitting in the shop going through a box of photos when the owner leaned across, asked, “do you like Rembrandt?” and passed this one over. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>He was thinking of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicholas Tulp </i>(1631). Google it and you can see why. One difference is that in Rembrandt’s painting only two of the observers are looking towards the camera, so to speak, whereas in this photo they all are. I found several snapshots taken at dissections or autopsies at Turkish student hospitals. It’s something you think would have been disapproved of in Anglo-Saxon hospitals, if not actually forbidden. We still think that it is disrespectful to the deceased, even when logic tells us the person on the operating table is beyond caring what we think, and it isn’t as though these students are behaving offensively.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kgqbt7RnWDg/VYyrJtiEPXI/AAAAAAAB-aQ/NZV8afMzo5U/s1600/turkdeath3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Kgqbt7RnWDg/VYyrJtiEPXI/AAAAAAAB-aQ/NZV8afMzo5U/s640/turkdeath3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Another thing that bothers us, and more so now than when these were taken, is the danger that the photographer is going to profit from the image. Financial gain is bad enough but worse would be the kind of voyeuristic pleasure achieved by sharing them. We live in contradictory times. We’re told that in the age of the smart phone news isn’t news without images and it’s up to us the citizens to take them and put share them online. We are also told that if we do that we are contributing to the decline of western civilization. When this photo was taken (circa 1940s) press photographers in the U.S tabloids were taking far more graphic images of murder and suicide victims than we see in the mainstream press. If this photo bothers us it could be because images of death have actually become unfamiliar to us as we forget how common they once were.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bnKfh3doW5Y/VYyrKNPKSMI/AAAAAAAB-aY/1zAoKsh5sPM/s1600/turkdeath2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="454" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bnKfh3doW5Y/VYyrKNPKSMI/AAAAAAAB-aY/1zAoKsh5sPM/s640/turkdeath2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Not that Turkey’s second-hand stores were overflowing with images of the dead but there were what statisticians call a significant factor, and most had something to do with the military. This is not surprising when you think that Turkey has always had a large army of conscripts and that soldiers of all ranks who die while on military service receive some kind of official ceremony (unless they were spies or deserters). This coffin has a flag draped over it, which means something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Either the deceased had a high rank or died on active service. The second doesn’t seem likely as Turkey’s conflicts 1930s to 1950s were internal and the military would not have been considered to be on a war footing. Though a snapshot in size, this has the look of a press photo.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LgNPqtT4VX4/VYyrKTdlJNI/AAAAAAAB-ag/zk2W1aoW87k/s1600/turkdeath9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LgNPqtT4VX4/VYyrKTdlJNI/AAAAAAAB-ag/zk2W1aoW87k/s640/turkdeath9.jpg" width="422" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Another military funeral, notable for the presence of the imam. In recent years any association between the armed forces and religious organizations has been seen as provocative, controversial or scandalous, depending what paper you were reading. Technically the military upheld Ataturk’s secularist principles but you can of course be secular and believe in an afterlife, or be religious and not wear the fact on your sleeve. Only in recent years has secularism been equated with atheism in Turkey. Even when Kemalism was at its strongest in the 1940s it would have been strange to send a soldier off without some religious element in the service. Even the most hard-bitten generals wonder what lies on the other side.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FtZAoTYU2FQ/VYyrK0bVvuI/AAAAAAAB-ao/gXiSJn8J7JM/s1600/turkdeath8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FtZAoTYU2FQ/VYyrK0bVvuI/AAAAAAAB-ao/gXiSJn8J7JM/s640/turkdeath8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Story number three: A Sunday afternoon in Tarlabașı and the body of a man from across the road from the apartment is lying in the street. He is in his mid-thirties and his body does not look particularly diseased so it is likely that he suffered a heart attack or an overdose. Most of the inhabitants of this part of Tarlabașı are Kurds and Rum, what other Turkish people call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">marjinals</i>, which means what it sounds like. The street is narrow and potholed. There is no pavement. Because it is Sunday a market is at the bottom of the street and so there is a steady line of people coming back and carrying bags of fruit and vegetables. No one stops to gawk at the body. There is a small group of women who perform histrionic displays of grief. One throws herself at the body and others pull her back. Someone else tosses her head back and emits a long wail that sounds like a small engine motorbike leaving a paddock. Eventually a doctor arrives to file a report. An ambulance turns up but apparently it’s a bit late so after a discussion it drives off. Perhaps an hour later four men arrive with a carpet. They put the dead man’s body in it and carry it down the hill. Did I photograph any of this? Of course not. I come from a culture where grief is expected to be private, and if it must be public then at least restrained. To have photographed the scene without anyone’s permission would have been in bad taste and an invasion of the family’s privacy, and yet the man’s death, or the initial mourning procedure, was absolutely public. They had no qualms about placing his body out where everyone could see it, so why should they be upset if strangers photographed it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uETQrghc_S4/VYyrL8iNaaI/AAAAAAAB-a4/-juklzowOTo/s1600/turkdeath7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uETQrghc_S4/VYyrL8iNaaI/AAAAAAAB-a4/-juklzowOTo/s640/turkdeath7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">It used to be normal to photograph a funeral in Turkey. They were events, like weddings and birthdays and they were public. They are still that. It isn’t unusual to find a street blocked by a crowd with a coffin surfing above it, but there’s no longer one man with a camera; there are dozens. An imperative has become an option. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z16HiOj5b6Y/VYyrLQRAlgI/AAAAAAAB-aw/VHyd-8tdIhQ/s1600/turkdeath10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z16HiOj5b6Y/VYyrLQRAlgI/AAAAAAAB-aw/VHyd-8tdIhQ/s640/turkdeath10.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">In Anglo Saxon countries we can spend a week organizing the funeral but in Muslim cultures the body must be buried as soon as possible, ideally the next day. This leaves no time for family members from out of town to get to the funeral, let alone if they have to drop everything and fly in from abroad. In that situation photographs of funerals can give absent mourners some kind of contact. Notice the ripped and stained coat of the man in the foreground. Most of the people in this photo look dirt poor. In the way that post mortem photos of children from the previous century were often the only images the family would have of them, maybe it was the case with this funeral. People wanted to remember the deceased but also the event of his passing. If you couldn’t make it maybe you’d want to know who did. Note the jacket draped over the headstone? Try getting away with that in Australia.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AY6ffzO81_Q/VYyrM2Tm3AI/AAAAAAAB-bQ/ks8ESthTF4s/s1600/turkdeath11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="452" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AY6ffzO81_Q/VYyrM2Tm3AI/AAAAAAAB-bQ/ks8ESthTF4s/s640/turkdeath11.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">One other thing you’ll notice about the three photos of funerals above: there are no women. This brings me to story number four. When the father of someone at a religiously minded institution died the men were talking about going to Izmir for the funeral, which would leave me and the female staff to take care of things. When I wanted to know why the women weren’t going, one of the men explained that women aren’t wanted at funerals because they get emotional. I’ve always assumed that a funeral was one situation you were entitled to get emotional but I guess the men-folk figured that would kind of spoil it for everyone else. Women have to do their grieving elsewhere, or turn up to the grave later. She has her hands out, palms facing upwards in the manner of Muslim prayer. Was this a case of someone being asked to come along and take a photo or did they just happen to have a camera with them? Is this evidence of something we understand a bit or not at all?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-revzA23ABHg/VYyrMDknoEI/AAAAAAAB-a8/4Clzoaf-VsM/s1600/turkdeath6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-revzA23ABHg/VYyrMDknoEI/AAAAAAAB-a8/4Clzoaf-VsM/s640/turkdeath6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">If you are visiting Istanbul, you might take a look at the Orientalist galleries at the Pera Museum and see a world as depicted by Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It seems life for the Franco/Italian crowd amounted to lying around in billowing gowns listening to flutes and zithers. Around that time a cemetery occupied the slopes between Taksim and the Bosphorus. It was demolished – I don’t know when – and later some of the monuments were moved to Zincirlikuyu Cemetery. They became part of a frieze running along a back wall. Here you can encounter seventeenth and eighteenth century Western European merchants and diplomats brought down by outbreaks of the plague or cholera. Clearly Constantinople was a lot of fun until the fleet from India dropped anchor. We share with Turkish people an approval of photographing the headstones of our deceased family members. At least we must assume that is why this headstone was photographed. Traditionally Turkish headstones were taller and narrower, had prayers in Ottoman script inscribed and were never as elaborately carved or surmounted with saints and angels as western European one were. Nevertheless, for the mid-twentieth century this is a very European monument. Sipahioǧlu means son of a cavalry officer. It tells the family was well off and like a lot of affluent Turkish families secularized early on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XQh1_Qx_qCs/VYyrMdHn4PI/AAAAAAAB-bI/LlcJc9mnuvg/s1600/turkdeath4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="450" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XQh1_Qx_qCs/VYyrMdHn4PI/AAAAAAAB-bI/LlcJc9mnuvg/s640/turkdeath4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span>Sion, which is French for Zion, means the Promised Land, the sweet hereafter, and in this case is also the family name. How apt all round. These days Turkey’s government is keen to show off its credentials as an enemy of Zionism, blithely forgetting to mention its ongoing arms trade with the Great Enemy or the detail that for all its bluster it has been quick to promise and slow in paying aid to Gaza. This tomb reminds us of another age. Not necessarily a better age; despite commonly read claims that Istanbul’s Jewish community lived in harmony with everyone else during the last century there were frequent reports from the 1930s and ‘40s of persecutions and pogroms, and we shouldn’t forget Elza Niego, the Jewish typist whose murder by a jealous Turkish official in 1927 sparked riots against Jewish citizens. It was more acceptable for a Turkish man to kill a Jewish citizen of Istanbul than it was for her family to complain at the way they had been treated. This tomb would be in one of several Jewish cemeteries in Istanbul. Today there are very few Jewish people living in Istanbul compared to the old days and today most of the protestants and Catholics are likely to be ex-pats, so one way to read the history of the city when its citizenry (as distinct from its inhabitants) was more cosmopolitan and multicultural is to count the number of old cemeteries catering to the non-Muslim communities. Visit some if you can. It’s like getting a history lesson from someone who was there.</div><span lang="EN-GB"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vASN00s8jRU/VYyrNExGKJI/AAAAAAAB-bY/DpmP0foOiGA/s1600/turkdeath12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="422" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vASN00s8jRU/VYyrNExGKJI/AAAAAAAB-bY/DpmP0foOiGA/s640/turkdeath12.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB">Story number five: more than twenty years ago I was travelling through the far east of the country, around the Iranian border, and in villages I kept seeing gravestones out the back of houses. If I asked anyone about them I can’t remember their answer but I thought then and still do that the backyard is a perfectly respectable place to bury our loved ones. We read that in prehistoric societies around the world it was common to have a room in the house or underneath it for the ancestors. Unfortunately we in the west live with the expectation that we will own and live in at least a couple of houses (one for the family, one for when they move out) so the idea won’t catch on again too soon. This man probably isn’t sitting is by a family plot in his backyard but the photo asks a related question. Is he asking the photographer to take a snap of him, or is he asking the photographer to take a snap of him together with his wife? </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEARTOFDYING"><span lang="EN-GB">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150618.00_p1/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEARTOFDYING?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6MhwXiKuxd4/VYyrHt-V9gE/AAAAAAAB-bc/DRB2zLcOT2k/s160-c/THEARTOFDYING.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/THEARTOFDYING?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">THE ART OF DYING</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-art-of-dying.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-1383744175784678593Thu, 11 Jun 2015 23:03:00 +00002015-06-11T16:20:58.992-07:00Alexander 'Zan' StarkAmerican WestEnvironmentHeritagehighwaysHistory of photographyreal photo postcardsUSALAND OF THE GIANTS<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>Postcards of the Redwood Highway</b> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“The nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”</span><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB">Theodore Roosevelt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3sTYYeomeTs/VXoN60Q56xI/AAAAAAAB9UY/F_Jtgk-gj80/s1600/redwood2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3sTYYeomeTs/VXoN60Q56xI/AAAAAAAB9UY/F_Jtgk-gj80/s640/redwood2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">During the 1920s Ansel Adams photographed the Sierra Nevada and the Californian forests, establishing the image of a world that was sublime and pristine. Adams said wilderness was sacred and some influential people believed him. At the same time Charlie and Leslie Payne were running their postcard company Art Ray out of their van on the Redwood Highway, while Alexander ‘Zan’ Stark travelled the same road as well as others across the mountains ad into Nevada. To them the Redwood Highway was a rather more trashy experience, about as reverential as a plastic Jesus winking on the dashboard. It was a world where once great redwoods and Sequoias were turned into road tunnels, houses and even public toilets. But if honesty has anything to do with reflecting public taste, then Art Ray and Zan were much more honest than Adams. Their image of the highway accorded more closely with the official and the popular image. Between the wars, the more people who visited wilderness the more its status was validated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The notion that wilderness ought to be protected from people never entered anyone’s head.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-60Utk4szJYU/VXoN7_r4PHI/AAAAAAAB9Uk/_RrAuMDPles/s1600/redwood3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-60Utk4szJYU/VXoN7_r4PHI/AAAAAAAB9Uk/_RrAuMDPles/s640/redwood3.jpg" width="402" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Today we are driving along the Redwood Highway, in the company of Art Ray, Zan Stark and Frank Patterson. It is the late 1920s (or thereabouts) and the towering trees have inspired two responses among Americans. One is to be overcome with awe at the power and majesty of nature and the other is to calculate how much cash could be made from cutting down a single tree. Some Americans can experience both simultaneously and not be aware of any contradiction, not the least Theodore Roosevelt, who died in 1919, before any of these were taken. Notice how Roosevelt chooses his words in the quote above, advocating neither the protection nor destruction of forests but responsible management; two words America has always struggled with when appearing together. These postcards epitomize the schizophrenic attitude to wilderness that infected the American psyche in the first decades of the last century. The Redwood Highway was a place to worship nature, and it was also a theme park.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CZNofrXCiCw/VXoN8Tf_FqI/AAAAAAAB9Uo/D6gTSSBvrfU/s1600/redwood4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CZNofrXCiCw/VXoN8Tf_FqI/AAAAAAAB9Uo/D6gTSSBvrfU/s640/redwood4.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">During the period when most of these photos were taken, the USA had the best environmental policy in the world. Every other country that had wilderness it wanted preserved adapted the American model. But for something to be the best in the world does not mean it has to be good, merely better than what anywhere else has to offer. The American model, such as it was imposed at Yellowstone, had parcels of wilderness that were not protected from development so much as dependent upon a particular type; tourism. There was nothing inconsistent in having thousands of tourists visiting places like Yellowstone and Yosemite and each individual being asked to imagine they were in some pristine wilderness. Even those two words were dubious. The ecosystems were barely given a moment’s thought: wolves were hunted to extinction in Yellowstone by the mid-1920s and being a national park never gave an area protection from grazing farm animals or logging. As for pristine; it conveniently avoided any idea there had been people living in these areas prior to the arrival of Europeans.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pOtMExCAR1k/VXoN83mbzNI/AAAAAAAB9U0/bLeWSax5Vfo/s1600/redwood5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="404" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pOtMExCAR1k/VXoN83mbzNI/AAAAAAAB9U0/bLeWSax5Vfo/s640/redwood5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The dense fernbrakes are what we expect to find in an ancient forest, but only because we’ve been told to. Most genuinely old growth forests have been subject to thousands of years of human use. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the west coast was the most densely inhabited part of North America. We can be sure that fire was used to control the ground cover and promote particular plants. Thick undergrowth like this would have made hunting and movement difficult and when we look at the historical record, it is more common to read descriptions by Europeans remarking on how open the forests are. This photograph shows us what the forest was like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after </i>European intervention, when the Native Americans had been forced out of the redwood forests and the undergrowth was allowed to run amok. Our modern idea of wilderness as untouched and untamed is as much propaganda as the idea that First Nations people were passive caretakers who did nothing but watch plants grow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lKe0sFems6I/VXoN9YEpa_I/AAAAAAAB9U8/Xu-CqD5B53Q/s1600/redwood6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="410" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lKe0sFems6I/VXoN9YEpa_I/AAAAAAAB9U8/Xu-CqD5B53Q/s640/redwood6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The redwoods of the Pacific coast and the Sequoia of the Sierra Nevada are different species of the cypress family. They owe their exceptional height to two factors. One is the competition in a densely populated forest where each tree was involved in a race to the sunlight that over several thousand years became increasingly distant from the rootstock. This can’t explain everything, otherwise all forests would have enormous trees. The second factor is their locations between the broad Pacific and the high Sierras. We don’t consider this part of the world tropical, it’s in the wrong place and it’s too cold, but if we think in terms of humidity, northern California rivals equatorial jungles. For trees to reach 75 metres or 250 feet tall, they don’t need vast amounts of rain but a steady, relentless damp.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--Q6yNChl5Sk/VXoN6SyICJI/AAAAAAAB9UU/EIP_3UAzswU/s1600/redwood1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--Q6yNChl5Sk/VXoN6SyICJI/AAAAAAAB9UU/EIP_3UAzswU/s640/redwood1.jpg" width="402" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Theodore Roosevelt was an early supporter of the conservation of the redwood forests and was instrumental in having the Muir Woods protected. The land put aside for the national park belonged to a lesser-known Republican, William Kent. Like Roosevelt, Kent wasn’t at all opposed to a timber industry but he realized that unless some areas were given protection the likely result would be the total destruction of redwood forest. The first steps were taken in 1908 when Roosevelt had the Muir Woods preserved as a national monument. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I have a theory about Roosevelt. Today he is known for three things: his environmental policies, his pre-presidential years as an adventurer, rough rider, cowboy, and for being the last president of the Gilded Age, when the capitalist class showed off its largesse by building public institutions: universities, museums and art galleries and libraries. Think of the latter two reputes and the first takes on a new tone. Here was a man who was passionate about frontiers, the physical ones he could explore on horseback and in canoes,, and the frontiers of knowledge, and by the turn of the century even France and Britain were looking to America to lead the way there. What is it to such a man then when forests are cut down and office towers built in their place? Cut down the wilderness and you remove the frontier, and the world has no need anymore for a man like Roosevelt. His job is done. Preserve wilderness and he can still believe there is a frontier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ah8lAgtOJeA/VXoN-7zt_MI/AAAAAAAB9VU/VOkaU2HdI3w/s1600/redwood7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ah8lAgtOJeA/VXoN-7zt_MI/AAAAAAAB9VU/VOkaU2HdI3w/s640/redwood7.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Talking about the sacred and the profane; on the back of this postcard stamped 1946, Anita writes that she, Helen and Jack are ‘having a swell time’. At the Cathedral Tree, ‘we sat and listened to the music and it was just like being in church’. Cathedrals are circles of trees that grew up around a dead one and were named cathedrals because the way the light filtered through from the canopy reminded some people of the effect created in great European cathedrals. Anita is telling us however that she, Helen and Jack could sit in the circle and hear piped music, probably one of Bach’s works for organ. These days we say the way to appreciate the wild is to stand still in silence. In the 1940s the idea was to experience comparisons with the great works of man. What nature proposed, we had done better.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z0Fl6_SbV-o/VXoN-QMM4vI/AAAAAAAB9VM/a_CWJGS6Dyc/s1600/redwood8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="410" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z0Fl6_SbV-o/VXoN-QMM4vI/AAAAAAAB9VM/a_CWJGS6Dyc/s640/redwood8.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span>The redwoods are among the oldest trees on the planet, with a few getting close to 4000 years old (still falling short of some nearby bristlecone pines by a millennium). We see that this one’s life came to a premature end in 1930. The lumberjacks who set about cutting it down could probably tell how old it was to within a century so when it fell they sliced off a disc and sent it on to whoever was managing the tourist facilities. Dendrochronology is the art of reading tree rings to understand climatic patterns. To people that can read them, tree rings reveal a precise story of shifting weather conditions. Although they cannot tell us who or what was living in the vicinity 500 years ago they can provide an explanation as to why everyone packed up and moved out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>To the rest of us the best that tree rings offer is a timeline that appears astonishing but tells us nothing. Well, we can see here that this tree was already sturdy and mature when William the Conqueror landed at Hastings, which needless to say is nowhere near northern California. And height-wise it was impressive by the time Columbus landed on an island in another ocean. As history lessons go, it’s a bit non sequitur. Still, there’s an irony at work. You want to impress on tourists how old these trees are but the only way you can do that is by cutting them down.</div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m9dwUuJldnI/VXoN9wCfEwI/AAAAAAAB9VE/DTt0crpBquw/s1600/redwood10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m9dwUuJldnI/VXoN9wCfEwI/AAAAAAAB9VE/DTt0crpBquw/s640/redwood10.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Things could be worse. An ancient tree, just a sapling when the three wise men were on their way to Bethlehem, could end up being turned into what some Americans inanely refer to as ‘comfort stations’. Is this divine retribution, a credit to man’s ingenuity or is it an indignity? Back then the second would have been the answer. Even passionate advocates for wilderness believed that tourism was going to nurture and ultimately protect national parks, so turning dead or dying trees into toilets would have a harmless compromise. It wasn’t until the 1960s, when the damage from 1920s era environmental policies became apparent, that people like Aldo Leopard proposed Washington rethink its environmental strategy while Edward Abbey insisted that everyone from Ansel Adams to Theodore Roosevelt and even the patron saint of the forests, John Muir, had got it wrong.&nbsp;</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rN0QUUrCEzE/VXoN_dvvWGI/AAAAAAAB9VY/ITDfohce-T0/s1600/redwood11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rN0QUUrCEzE/VXoN_dvvWGI/AAAAAAAB9VY/ITDfohce-T0/s640/redwood11.jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Well it's been fun. We've witnessed the beauty of nature and the banality of man looking quite comfortable together, seen things that some of our contemporary Americans would rather we hadn't and others that remind us there was a time when the choices facing us were simpler We've saved the best for last. The drive through tree is most iconic image of the Redwood Highway. Even people who can't spell Sequoia know it's the tree you can drive through. During the 1920s and 30s there were several of these trees on the highway. Most, including the Coolidge, have died, which somehow doesn’t sound surprising. At least three are still in operation, and all owned privately so they come with a fee. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Adams photographed plenty of redwoods but it’s doubtful he ever photographed one of these trees – the car, Beaver and Wally Cleaver's faces pressed against the window, would have been anathema to his purist eye – but I can’t help feeling that his view is all the more deceitful for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Whether he was suggesting his view was what the Redwood forest looked like now or what it could look like in the future, it was created in the darkroom. He was like a good lawyer in that you had to pay attention to what he was leaving out. Zan Stark and Art Ray weren’t that clever but if you want to know how environmental policy worked in the 1920s and ‘30s, which is the same as wanting to know why some aspects don’t work today, they are the photographers to look at.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/LANDOFTHEGIANTS"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150608.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/LANDOFTHEGIANTS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hnK2VXdWbmk/VXoN5_Pk70E/AAAAAAAB9Vc/gM4OhRmz4dc/s160-c/LANDOFTHEGIANTS.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/LANDOFTHEGIANTS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">LAND OF THE GIANTS</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/06/land-of-giants.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-7353850222415071247Fri, 29 May 2015 00:48:00 +00002015-05-28T17:48:39.442-07:00EgyptephemeraHistory of photographyInstamaticInteriorsphoto albumsSnapshotsTurkeyzoosTRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;"><b>Discarded sequences</b></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">“Murderers will try to recall the sequence of events, they will remember exactly what they did just before and just after. But they can never remember the actual moment of killing. This is why they will always leave a clue.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">Peter Ackroyd</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzDkNlTEpM8/VWe0NmG6mqI/AAAAAAAB5SM/DNDlTbNEu9w/s1600/sequence4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QzDkNlTEpM8/VWe0NmG6mqI/AAAAAAAB5SM/DNDlTbNEu9w/s1600/sequence4.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span>Sequences of photos snipped from proof sheets, cut out of albums or otherwise cast off, leaving us with what may be mysteries, or not, or clues to a bigger story, or not. Murderers may always leave clues, but so do photographers. The problem is that they seldom tell us what to. Notice how these two images above move from a kind of order to a kind of chaos, suggesting some force outside the photographer’s control is at work.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IGKyu-C-Sh0/VWe0ORzY6NI/AAAAAAAB5SY/A44MY4ut424/s1600/sequence6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IGKyu-C-Sh0/VWe0ORzY6NI/AAAAAAAB5SY/A44MY4ut424/s640/sequence6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">All of these were bought Turkey, which explains one or two details in the scenes. Other than for those however, they could have been taken anywhere. This zoo for example doesn’t look Turkish (except for the lion’s tiny cage). Sometimes we are able to read a very apparent narrative in a sequence, as with some below where people are playing for the camera, and then there are others like this one that tell a story like some French film from the mid-sixties; well there might be a plot and it could be logical, but should you care that much?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2qztO61is4M/VWe0OjWwxaI/AAAAAAAB5Sk/QvVIdXFsKE8/s1600/sequence7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2qztO61is4M/VWe0OjWwxaI/AAAAAAAB5Sk/QvVIdXFsKE8/s640/sequence7.jpg" width="244" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">So, is this five photos or just one? I say it is one because you can not consider any of the portraits here on its own without physically cutting it free from the others.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-egVHsfCCl2M/VWe0PfcDk3I/AAAAAAAB5Sw/IkTU-zzW9zI/s1600/sequence8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-egVHsfCCl2M/VWe0PfcDk3I/AAAAAAAB5Sw/IkTU-zzW9zI/s640/sequence8.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">This one on the other hand is interesting because all snapshots taken at Giza are interesting, yet I think the middle photo stands up on its own and the two bookending it do not. Remove them and the surviving image is not diminished.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5oosLwAGz0M/VWe0PC5zSXI/AAAAAAAB5Ss/PvztMHWDEqI/s1600/sequence5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5oosLwAGz0M/VWe0PC5zSXI/AAAAAAAB5Ss/PvztMHWDEqI/s640/sequence5.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">Here the photos complement each other thanks to the way the child on the right looks at itself on the left. We can see how the photographer would have been pleased with either and printed the proof to compare them. The one on the right wins because of the balance between light and shadow.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PkIKPIffCs8/VWe0PyTfwBI/AAAAAAAB5S8/fRkx6ko702A/s1600/sequence9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="452" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PkIKPIffCs8/VWe0PyTfwBI/AAAAAAAB5S8/fRkx6ko702A/s640/sequence9.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">Four photos – or do we mean two? – of the same three people. There’s a strong impression here that the three are actors, because they perform so professionally for the camera. The printing isn’t first rate but good enough to see how each frame has its own intriguing details, from the floating hat in one to the expression on the faces of the man and woman in another.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HvSuss21bsI/VWe0Ncy17II/AAAAAAAB5SE/CgxE4sCPPis/s1600/sequence1a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HvSuss21bsI/VWe0Ncy17II/AAAAAAAB5SE/CgxE4sCPPis/s640/sequence1a.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">It’s not rare to read that the source of many snapshots’ enigmatic quality is the absence of a surrounding context, without which we cannot understand the relationship between photographer and subject. Here’s a sequence that is all the more difficult to read because of its surrounding context. We get the three women sitting together, but what of the first photo in the sequence? The radio makes sense, and the book on the left is a medical encyclopaedia, which may help us understand the cut out naked woman on the right, but that is a mere assumption.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdDnDfqm_Dc/VWe0QZ-a0HI/AAAAAAAB5TA/I4xt82VCnls/s1600/sequence10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="468" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MdDnDfqm_Dc/VWe0QZ-a0HI/AAAAAAAB5TA/I4xt82VCnls/s640/sequence10.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">Back to a diptych from the same source as the first image, and a reminder of that brief era between the late 1960s and the mid 1970s when the combination of two images on the same panel was considered outré, or at least cool. Robert Frank is the best known exponent and he liked to include a cryptic text on one or both photos. What was good about this style, movement, genre or whatever word fits best, was the way it obliged us to look for and think about the connection. We ended up talking about it, and though the conversations could have been lifted from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Annie Hall</i>, their absence is noted these days. In this case we might note how the two women appear in both while the person in the centre is different. During the long and tedious 1990s-2000s the placement of two images together could only mean issues of identity or the self, but in the 1970s the photographer could shrug and say, ‘whatever you see is there’. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/TRUTHANDCONSEQUENCES"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-size: 20.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150520.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/TRUTHANDCONSEQUENCES?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F7im_Y8t4v8/VWe0MsL9_jE/AAAAAAAB5TE/iFfT7gGrhlU/s160-c/TRUTHANDCONSEQUENCES.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/TRUTHANDCONSEQUENCES?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/05/truth-and-consequences.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5405618708337655725.post-3688351974734696743Tue, 26 May 2015 23:04:00 +00002015-05-26T16:05:16.309-07:00advertisingbathroomsCanadafashionHistory of photographypropagandaHIDDEN PERSUADERS<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Canadian advertising photos from the 1950s</span></b><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">“Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">William Bernbach</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oMEVbVCniIY/VWT5NlghMCI/AAAAAAAB5Qc/5bSSkLHY8bI/s1600/ad1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="508" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oMEVbVCniIY/VWT5NlghMCI/AAAAAAAB5Qc/5bSSkLHY8bI/s640/ad1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A collection of Canadian advertising photographs, of everyday household objects, of stuff. They were taken in the 1950s, something the packaging tells us at once. They tell us things we don’t think we need to know but are the very fine details without which we couldn’t understand the past, such as what products Mr and Mrs Average Canadian bought at the supermarket and what did they keep on the shelf behind the bathroom mirror. This is a world so ordinary it looks alien.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I605OGhrtro/VWT5QadGbDI/AAAAAAAB5RQ/HmnZdmw17Is/s1600/ad12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I605OGhrtro/VWT5QadGbDI/AAAAAAAB5RQ/HmnZdmw17Is/s640/ad12.jpg" width="512" /></a></div><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Madmen</span></i><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> was set in the same period these photos were taken, when the middle classes became prosperous in a way they hadn’t been able to for a generation, when ad agencies started making serious money, and when advertising became associated with a kind of ruthless creativity. At least that was the way it was in the top end magazines like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Esquire</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vogue</i>, who pushed the notion that brands mattered to the modern man and woman, as though they might as well be be naked without Johnny Walker in one hand and Philip Morris in the other. But same time, different world. Down in the real world of mid level incomes and struggling aspirations, advertising was still about product more than image. TV dinners, deodorants and lingerie could be depicted according to the same formulae because there was no need to vary. (Most of these photographs would have ended up in catalogues or newspaper ads.)&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PA7XBgbUCkA/VWT5PQdCZ8I/AAAAAAAB5Q8/1GfMTMGEsf0/s1600/ad7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PA7XBgbUCkA/VWT5PQdCZ8I/AAAAAAAB5Q8/1GfMTMGEsf0/s640/ad7.jpg" width="508" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Whatever <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madmen</i> might suggest, the accounts that photographers have left us suggest most of them treated advertising as hack work, done only to pay the bills. A handful achieved a glamorous status but most disavowed the very idea. Technically all that was needed to fulfill the Bionet contract was knowledge of the basic rules, mainly what the lighting set-up should be. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madmen </i>is actually about people in our contemporary TV world. Acutely, even cynically aware of how dull and shallow that place is, they are trying to sell the image of glamour, not to us but to themselves.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LXFgmT_z0XY/VWT5QJJOSLI/AAAAAAAB5RM/RtxtQL2WGGQ/s1600/ad10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LXFgmT_z0XY/VWT5QJJOSLI/AAAAAAAB5RM/RtxtQL2WGGQ/s640/ad10.jpg" width="508" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A stamp with the name Jack Markow appears on the back of two of these prints. The Markow studio address was at 1827 St Catherine St Montreal. The building still stands, now occupied by an art supply store and a martial arts gym.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Some quick research reveals that Markow was born in Montreal in 1921 and died there in 2001. As with a lot of commercial photographers, his legacy is scattered throughout various archives yet it tells us little about him. A man on hire who prolifically photographed medicinal products, bar mitzvahs, evangelical meetings, Quebec nationalists and new buildings in the CBD will tell us less about himself than someone whose output was narrower and in shorter supply. To understand Markow, we need to find the snaps he took of his family, but maybe they don’t exist. Maybe the busman’s holiday didn’t appeal to him; the mere thought of picking up a camera became physically painful for Jack Markow. Would you be that excited if you had just spent all week photographing diuretics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IXHlYR9drhc/VWT5PC7xsiI/AAAAAAAB5Q0/0sSKdsF5CR8/s1600/ad8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IXHlYR9drhc/VWT5PC7xsiI/AAAAAAAB5Q0/0sSKdsF5CR8/s640/ad8.jpg" width="516" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It is just coincidence that so many of the two dozen photographs bought in this collection are of pharmaceutical products, yet it may not be. The 1950s were the beginning of the modern age of the pharmaceutical industry, when there was not only a product for every minor complaint but it had the imprimatur of various government departments. This was a time when the side effects of drugs were often discovered once they had been on the market a few months. Today, conscientious doctors advise us that a little pain is not necessarily a bad thing but in the 1950s discomfort of any intensity was something to be avoided. We can thank the war for that. Firstly it had necessitated a series of pharmaceutical breakthroughs, and also the postwar peace encouraged the avoidance of pain. It was as though the Government was leaning over and asking, in a kindly voice, haven’t you suffered enough?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KmT1JgYlwL8/VWT5PgrrMSI/AAAAAAAB5RE/2z-NZxY3oB0/s1600/ad6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="516" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KmT1JgYlwL8/VWT5PgrrMSI/AAAAAAAB5RE/2z-NZxY3oB0/s640/ad6.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But back to the original point, the one about stuff. Those of us born too late to experience the 1950s can be persuaded that things were better back then, and by things we mean stuff, not politics or lifestyles. Well it’s true that in the 1950s cigarettes didn’t give you lung cancer and Coke wasn’t responsible for diabetes, and we’re always being told that a new packaged pie tastes like pies used to, which means like they ought to. When we look at the Steinberg’s ‘kitchen fresh’ (whatever that means) chicken pie, do we not wonder if it would taste more like a chicken pie should to our jaded senses? You can bet it was horrid: a sludgy confection of artificial pastry and gravy surrounding some pink cubes of former chicken, but at a time when the world feels harder, more insecure and less generous place than it was when these photos were taken, nostalgia for a non-existent taste sensation stands in for other illusions as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sFKrSmfgT74/VWT5N-k5U4I/AAAAAAAB5Qg/vV6ePbYo930/s1600/ad11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sFKrSmfgT74/VWT5N-k5U4I/AAAAAAAB5Qg/vV6ePbYo930/s640/ad11.jpg" width="526" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So, did all the things we see here come about because we wanted them, or was it because advertisers told us that we did? Was BO a problem before deodorants appeared or did it become one only after a solution had been found? In 1957, contemporaneously with these photos, Vance Packard published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hidden Persuaders</i>, which didn’t just expose some of the tricks advertisers used but argued that the real danger was that political machines were beginning to use them. Half a century of wonder drugs and lotions later, the question is more refined: have we become inoculated?</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/HIDDENPERSUADERS"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">VIEW THE GALLERY HERE</span></a></div><table style="width: 194px;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" style="background: url(https://www.gstatic.com/pwa/s/v/lighthousefe_20150520.00_p0/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left; height: 194px;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/HIDDENPERSUADERS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite"><img height="160" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dy4uvOqPgl0/VWT5M_eI7JE/AAAAAAAB5RY/Y6dyIEFQ39Y/s160-c/HIDDENPERSUADERS.jpg" style="margin: 1px 0 0 4px;" width="160" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116699650410186625428/HIDDENPERSUADERS?authuser=0&amp;feat=embedwebsite" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">HIDDEN PERSUADERS</a></td></tr></tbody></table>http://junkshopsnapshots.blogspot.com/2015/05/hidden-persuaders.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (One Mans Treasure)0